


I Think I Saw You

by Fordanoia



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: (which i know is vague but bear with me i'm not good with ao3 tags), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - A Tale of Two Stans, Episode: s02e12 A Tale of Two Stans, Gen, Ghosts, Hospitalization, Mystery, Paranormal Mystery, Possible Character Death, Stan's alone until he's not, Stangst, Supernatural Elements, Swearing, minor horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-02-23 04:43:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23705902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fordanoia/pseuds/Fordanoia
Summary: Stan comes to Gravity Falls, but when Ford doesn’t show up he has to go looking for him. Amidst, a strange house and a mysterious presence he tries to figure out what exactly is going on and where Ford disappeared to.[Tags/Rating to update with each chapter, put in some tags preemptively though]
Relationships: Ford Pines & Stan Pines
Comments: 76
Kudos: 151





	1. Prologue

Stan hesitated for a half second because this would be the worst re-first impression, breaking into his house. That only lasted half a second though because it was a blizzard outside and Ford had written for him to come here anyway, the least he could have done was answer the door. _Why wasn’t he answering the door?_

He pushed the worried thought aside though, just because this looked creepy and ominous didn’t mean it was.  
Stan took a few steps back, dropping his duffel bag onto the wooden porch then body slammed the front door. And immediately regretted thinking of this place as some rickety cabin in the middle of the woods because that door was not rickety in the slightest.

On the second shove, he heard the clinks and scraping of metal, but- more than one. There had to be at least two or three metal locks on the other side of this thing, which either meant Ford was inside or went out another way.

“Ford?” He called out again, a last ditch effort. “You in there?”

Nothing.

Grimly, Stan picked up his bag and braced himself going back into the cold and around the house for another door or window.

At the side door there was a window beside it, it was almost too easy, until Stan saw the window was boarded up.

He jabbed an elbow into the pane of the window closest to the door handle, the sound of the relatively dull crack of the thick glass getting swept away by the wind. After clearing the glass away, he started hitting at the board of wood in his way. After a few minutes of artful property damage, he reached an arm inside and unlocked the door.

The air inside was almost as cold as it was outside and there were no lights on. The only light was the light gray outside from behind him, casting his shadow down the hallway.

Stan shivered and closed the door beside himself, haphazardly hitting the board back in place enough for it to go back in place enough to cover up what he’d done.

“Ford?” He called out loudly, not waiting or expecting a response as he started to walk into the house.

The very first room he passed made him stop because there was a damn dinosaur skull in a tank, a tall metal tower with subtle blinking lights, and within seconds Stan was catching more of the odd items inside the room.

After he was over the small shock of seeing a living room covered with stuff like this, which honestly made sense for Ford, he realized that it was... kinda disorganized. Not messy. As much as he didn’t really like thinking about the room they used to live in together, because how did he think about the room without thinking about everything else, he remembered it and how Ford had been.

Ford could be messy and hell they both had been, but there was a difference between a mess and the disorganized chaos of jars tipped over and spreads of paper that looked as though they had been stepped on and kicked.

So- So, it was disorganized, so what.

Stan quickly moved through the rest of the house, flicking on lights as he went.  
Living spaces were all about the same as what he’d seen. Kitchen was a mess and reeked of burnt coffee.

The longer Stan went without seeing Ford the more worried, and at the same time at ease he got. On the one hand, the longer he went without seeing him was the longer he didn’t know what was going on and the way this place looked wasn’t helping with where his thoughts ran. On the other, not seeing Ford meant not finding his body lying on the ground or anything like that.

Then Stan got to the upstairs. The upstairs bathroom had a crack in the mirror, and a lump of white cotton that was covered in distinct, dark burgundy stains. A lot of stains. Not enough to make him think too much though, but enough that it didn’t look like a small accident.

The last room Stan went into was the attic with a grim anticipation only for it to turn out... to really just look like any other attic with boxes stacked inside and covering most of the walls.

Stan slowly breathed out, lingering around the room and gradually relaxing. He still had no idea where Ford was at, but nothing looked like a crime scene here besides maybe where Stan had broken in and ‘technically’ commited a crime.

He passed back around the house again, slow and actually taking in the rooms this time around. Turned on the heating too, though he probably would have been better just looking for wood to put in the fireplace and holing up in there.

Hell, maybe Ford went out for groceries. His kitchen looked like he lived solely off of coffee right now.

For now, Stan would just look around while he had the chance.

Whatever this was, it was going to come slamming back into his face any minute as soon as Ford got home, he was sure.


	2. A Place to Start

After an hour he still hadn’t seen Ford, and it was still freezing. When he checked the thermostat he saw why the heat hadn’t changed, out of the side of it there a few wires poked out and when Stan pulled the cover off he saw the bundle of mangled wires that had been shakily cut and pulled.

An hour and a half ago, this would have been something he could play off, instead it just added onto the pile of everything else he had found since. The blood, the locks, and then all the writings.

The paranoid scrawls of Ford’s handwriting across papers scattered both on the floor and his desks, none of any that made real sense. Most of his cursive had turned illegible with haphazard lines and out of what wasn’t it was mostly technical talk about machinery and electric waves that Stan didn’t understand the first thing about.

There was only one idea that Stan could get out of the writings, because Ford had written it over and over in different ways, and it was creepy as hell.

_‘I’m being watched.’_

The idea echoed throughout the entire house - into the excessive amount of locks on the front door, the extra nails in the thick boards pressed against the windows, the barbed wire strung out in the snow around the house.

It even followed Stan himself when he had gone outside to grab firewood from the stack of cut logs near the edge of the trees. He only felt it though because he’d been reading the idea over and over while in some kind of horror movie murder hut looking cabin out in the middle of the woods.

It somehow felt even colder inside even after he closed the door. The icy wind from outside whipping inside after him and scraping at his sides and around his shoulders persisting until he was halfway down the hallway. He supposed that’s what he got for breaking a window for all the wind to come in through.

Stan carried the logs to the fireplace and lit a fire there, settling down on the floor in front of it for the heat.

His gut insisted something was wrong, but Stan had already figured that when he’d gotten the letter. Only difference now was it was a lot harder to think that Ford had sent him the postcard so they could reconnect or- or something like that.

There was no denying something was wrong by this point. He just wished Ford would show up so he could ask him what that something was.

Stan waited by the fire, letting crackling heat fill the space and time with half thoughts flitting every which way.

One particular rabbit hole of thinking kept pulling him back down every time he tried to convince himself that Ford would be back any minute.

Where would his brother have gone out in the middle of a blizzard so bad it frosted over Stan’s car in five minutes? And why?

After a half hour, the question was too big to ignore.

“Dammit, Ford, where the hell are you?” He muttered absently. Another cold wind wound its way into the room.

Grimacing, Stan got up off the floor, leaving his duffel bag in the middle of the floor and went to the kitchen. The fridge wasn’t empty, but it was clear not everything in there was meant to be food so Stan turned towards the pantry instead. As he did though, his eyes caught onto the window and stared. Between the wooden boards, the view outside was darkening.

If Ford was still outside - what if he was stuck somewhere close? Just nearby, Stan could check that far. Ford himself couldn’t have gotten that far on foot himself, and if he was in a car then he at least had something to hide in to keep himself from turning into a popsicle.

Even if he didn’t find anything, Stan couldn’t stand just waiting around and doing nothing like this, not when something bad was looming over this whole situation.

Stan turned on his heel, out the kitchen and unlocking the back door before remembering to zip his jacket closed and pull up the hood. Stepping outside, he pulled on his gloves. He didn’t bother locking the door back.

The white expanse in front of his feet quickly led to the tall forest, and Stan walked forward, keeping his hands in his pockets for the time being, only pulling them out to mark snow against a tree side to help him keep track of where he was at or for balance going down a steep little hill.

“If you’re stuck in a damn ditch right now...” He swore aloud, nearly losing his balance and falling. With the light of the sun dying he couldn’t stay outside long, and he knew it and he knew walking into the woods when it was getting dark was stupid, but it was better than nothing.

As Stan turned right, walking in a large circle around where he knew the shack was, he shouted for Ford as he went. Nothing around him looked like a person and the only colors around were white and brown.

Stan got increasingly frustrated as the light dimmed to the point that he had even less of a chance of making anything important out.

 _Ford was supposed to be here_. Not outside here, but- but when Stan had showed up! Instead Stan came up to an empty cabin. Something was wrong enough for him to call Stan and he couldn’t tell what because Ford couldn’t even just _be here_ for when Stan showed up!!

He looked like he’d been the one needing help though. Maybe a gang was after Ford. He didn’t really think Ford would have gotten involved with a gang much less people at all looking at the state of his house, but it’d at least make _sense_.

All the little details inside the house screamed that Ford was scared of something or someone, and that wasn’t even bringing into the fact that Ford wrote like someone was after him, watching him.

Stan’s foot snagged onto a covered tree branch and he tipped forward with a curse - hands going out to catch himself. He hit the snowy floor on his gloved hands and then down the hill, sliding onto his side.

He stopped halfway down the hill, his entire right side covered with snow. He turned to a sitting position and carefully stood up, wobbling against the wind. He numbly wiped the snow off of himself before it all melted, gloves wet by the time he was done.

He sighed, biting down on his lip and taking in his dark surroundings. He wouldn’t be able to see Ford even if he was here.

Stan took in a deep breath, then cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted one last time. “Ford if you’re there then just say _something_!”

He waited in the dull hum of wind broken up by dense trees and softly shifting snow, straining his ears for a response.

Standing still like this and waiting for a noise only made him feel all the more alone.

He glanced down at his hands and took the wet gloves off to shove into his pockets up against the brass knuckles. Turning, he headed back up the hill towards the shack, pushing his hands into his pockets.

He started shivering after a couple minutes, clenching his jaw tight to stop his teeth from clacking.

Stan pressed his arms into his sides bracing himself as he made it back onto flat ground again. The wind has since started to die down, at the very least.

A little while later he finally saw the shape of the shack through the trees, and turned direction to make a beeline towards it.

His right arm and leg felt like they were overheating by this point, but he’d been around enough to know when he was actually in danger of frostbite. That being said, he needed to change and light that fire again because the house was cold enough he’d definitely catch frostbite if he didn’t do anything about it.

Still shaking, he started the fire again. It took a few minutes because his fingers weren’t exactly cooperating right now, but hey.

He went upstairs to swipe some clothes from Ford’s room. He snorted at seeing the few sweater vests hanging in the closet, instead going for a plain black shirt and some pants.

After he changed, he raided through closets until he finally found one with a blanket inside and wrapped it around himself before going back down and sitting in front of the fire to warm up. He was still hungry, but he could deal with that later.

The more he warmed up the more bone tired he felt.

Stan tried to let himself fall asleep, and he was well beyond the point of being tired enough for it, but it took a while. He knew he’d wake up if Ford did come back in the middle of the night, he was a light sleeper. Not knowing what was going on though wasn’t helping.

Eventually though Stan fell asleep.

* * *

When Stan woke up the fire in front of him had burnt out and the cold was creeping in at him where he wasn’t covered.

He sat up, rubbing his eyes and blearily staring at the burn out embers turned black and gray now.

After a while he finally got up and changed into his dry clothes, calling a couple times into the empty house for Ford. It was worth a shot, even if Ford was nowhere to be seen, of course.

Stomach growling and rolling in on itself, he went to the kitchen and pulled a sleeve of crackers out from the pantry to eat on at the small kitchen table and sitting near the window so he could look out between the wooden boards.

Finding Ford was- hell Ford was the only reason he was here in the first place, he had to find him. And if he hadn’t showed up by now he wasn’t coming back here.

Stan sighed heavily. It was either finding him or figuring out what happened so he _could_ find him. Neither one was going well right now though.

“Okay,” he said to himself. “Okay.”

“So-” he ran his hand through his hair and sighed again. “So, what do I got? He thought someone was watching him, built this place up like he was expecting a raid or something, and now he’s not here.” Stan tapped his finger on the table and chewed on another cracker.

Both doors were locked too so it didn’t look like he was dragged out. Even if someone did drag him out of here, locking the door wouldn’t have made a difference and would have been more work than it was worth.

Stan pulled the postcard Ford had sent him out of his pocket now, looking at it and flipping it over. It had gotten crumpled and the texture had changed from where it had gotten wet last night, but everything was still readable.

He frowned. No send date stamped on it, so that didn’t help him. It could have taken the mail system anywhere from a few days to a few weeks for the post card to reach Stan from Oregon.

So... why would Ford have left this place after he’d fortified it this much. He couldn’t have had somewhere more secure than this, right? Not unless there was secretly a castle in the woods he could hold up inside. Did being watched matter so much that he had to get out of here?

Stan was still looking down at the postcard, thumb tracing over the bent corner that was close to falling off.

Where would he go if he thought this place wasn’t safe?

“Who’d even be watching you out here...?” Stan muttered, tucking the card away and getting up.

Stan went back through the rooms, grabbing any scrap of paper he saw with writing on it and dumped it all onto the desk in a relatively empty study.

He turned the lamp overhead on and started going through the papers for any information, quickly slapping all the stuff that only had equations on it into one pile to look if he got desperate.

What he was left with was - still hard to read just like yesterday, but this time he took the time to try and figure out the actual messy scrawls where they happened and find anything that could help point to what was going on.

The most legible stuff was full of technical jargon and Stan had to focus hard to not read the same sentence over and over again or look at the occasional doodled triangle.

It seemed to be about some machine to do with... electric omega waves? Some kind of waves. The more Stan read the more he picked up on the less scientific stuff inside. Supernatural barriers and rituals that definitely hadn’t come out of a physics textbook.

There was a room here that had been half filled with photos and samples of supernatural things, like mushrooms three times as tall as Ford himself and the needles of whatever a gremloblin was. It was a nice reminder that even if he hadn’t seen Ford yet, his brother still hadn’t changed that much.

After reading through most of the boring stuff Stan was able to piece together at least something. Ford had made two machines.

The first one, which Stan was going to call the problem machine, had made some kind of problem that Ford was trying to fix. He kept briefly mentioning this problem - a hole, a rift, a breach, never anything specific enough to know what it actually was though. No matter what though it always sounded like something about it was a problem or had made a problem.

The second machine was supposed to fix that. Stan didn’t really know how, kinda didn’t look like Ford had figured that out either, but it had something to do with waves and something supernatural.

Going from knowing zilch to knowing something was great, really it was better than the absolute jack all he had yesterday, but he still didn’t know what these machines were actually for.

If he was trying to use the supernatural with the fixer machine though maybe the problem also had something supernatural to it. And whatever the problem was, it was definitely big. Big enough that someone was after him.

Stan nearly gave up on the really illegible stuff, but half way through one page he realized that for several lines Ford was writing the same thing over and over ‘ _can’t sleep._ ’

Stan felt a pit drop into his stomach, looking for the very worst writing he could find across the pages and nearly every sentence he managed to trudge through sounded like that. Over and over again, Ford kept talking like even a nap like it was the end of the world.

Finally- god damn _finally_ \- Ford mentioned someone.

‘ _I have to stay awake. I can’t let Him win._ ’

“Come on, give me a name or something here." It was like the most annoying game of 'Guess Who' but from a vague piece of paper that nobody else besides Stan probably would have bothered to read through considering it was torn nearly in half and smudged in dirt.

Tapping his foot, Stan tried to quickly read and just winded up getting frustrated when he couldn’t, before he finally tossed the paper away from him.

His imagination got away from him, seeing Rico’s guys coming after Ford - except as soon as he imagined them creeping up to where Ford was tucked into the cabin it stopped making sense and the picture in his head fell away.

There were no bullet holes anywhere around the house, not even any forced signs of entry besides the one Stan made himself. So what had been going on when Ford had been here?

He wasn’t sure if he’d prefer if it was like the people he’d dealt with before, it’d be bad, but at least Stan knew how to work with that. This guy? Stan didn’t know what this guy had been doing or what he’d been planning to do that had Ford this scared.

“What was this guy watching you for anyway?” He asked the paper, the only damn thing around here that could even answer his questions.

The lamp light flickered three times before returning to normal. “Better not be cameras in here.” Stan muttered, before picking up a new page to read.

The lamp, however, started going in and out, electricity failing for long enough that it got distracting.

Stan stood up and unplugged the lamp from the wall then securely plugged it back in, looking back at the light a moment to make sure it wasn’t about to go on the fritz again before sitting back down.

He didn’t get far though because the light flickering again, stopping when Stan turned his head to watch it for a moment. He leaned back in his chair, tipping it back onto two legs and letting his eyes glaze over in the direction of all the paper piled up in front of him.

Maybe the guy had nabbed Ford while he was out of the house. It made enough sense. It’d explain why everything had still been locked up when Stan got here and why Ford wouldn’t have come back to his fortress of solitude.

If he was watching Ford then sure he’d know when he left the house and Ford couldn’t stay inside forever if he ran out of food.

The only other option Stan could really think of was that Ford decided this shack wasn’t safe anymore, but _again_ \- Stan had no idea where Ford could have gone.

Technically, he also had no idea where anything in town was or where someone could be trapping Ford, but finding a shady place sounded a lot easier than finding whatever Ford would consider safe from this guy’s eyes when a remote cabin out in the woods wasn’t. If Ford left for a new hideout, paranoid that he was being watched, then chances were he made sure he wasn’t seen and left no traces behind.

Stan started to feel grounded, with some options finally sliding into place.

Ford was either being held captive somewhere or he had hidden himself somewhere nobody would find him. So all Stan had to do was look around until he found someone that fit the bill, or if Ford was hiding out somewhere then for him to notice Stan running around and eventually leave him some kind of sign.

Stan's eyes focused as the light from the lamp started to quietly buzz, darkening to a low light before it began flickering.

Stan tipped his chair back to the ground, and reached inside to twist the bulb in tighter.

He watched the lamp expectantly and for a solid couple seconds it seemed like it had done the trick.

Then the light began to flicker on repeatedly, flashing three times and after a pause the light held on for a moment before the bulb darkened again.

Stan watched the faulty light flicker along for a few seconds before he finally stood up and just unplugged it from the wall entirely. He was done reading anyway.

Plus he could eat pretty much anything he wanted when Ford wasn’t here. Even if Ford wanted to get mad at him about it later, he’d just say he couldn’t get to the store for food anyway. Not that Stan had any money to buy food even if he went to town.

Stan went downstairs and into the kitchen, ready to rummage something more than crackers this time.

When he flipped the light switch on though it started flickering and Stan groaned. “You gotta be kidding me.”

He flipped the switch back off. Then on. “Work.”

The light turned on and Stan stayed poised with his finger at the switch and waited. When nothing happened he finally went over to the pantry. “That’s what I thought.”

He pushed aside the box of crackers and started to inspect the cans for soup or something good when the light started slowly flickering again. He ignored it for the first couple seconds, but it kept going.

After a dozen seconds he finally shot a scowl at the still flickering light before walking back towards the switch. The instant he took a step, the light started going completely haywire and he swore he could hear the electricity from it buzzing.

“Alright, yeah that’s-”

Stan had made it halfway across the kitchen when there was a loud pop and the light over his head burst, plunging the room into darkness with the tinkling of glass and a crackling noise of uncontained electricity that soon died down.


	3. Interference

Stan squinted up at the small ceiling light, eyes adjusting to the sudden change in light. When he could see again, he was able to make out shards of glass from the light bulb sitting at the bottom of the foggy dome.

 _Great_.

He quietly flipped off the light switch for all the good it did and walked back to the pantry, rubbing the back of his neck. 

Light bulbs going out wasn’t that out of the norm though. Even as he tried to reason that out to himself though, he knew it was bull.

 _Sure_. Light bulbs going out was pretty common. What _wasn’t_ ordinary was faulty lighting that followed you into a different room in a house that was working with zero problems beforehand. 

That wasn’t normal. Nothing about this - _any_ of this was normal. 

Stan sighed, rifling back into the cabinet for food and making himself a can of soup.

The house could have had bad wiring, and maybe it actually did, but not one light bulb even so much as flickered yesterday when he’d had every light on in the house at the same time.

It was suspicious, and he knew it was still just a light bulb blowing out, but he wasn’t an idiot. Well, he wasn’t that much of an idiot. There was ‘weird,’ and then there was ‘something is definitely going on here.’ Heck, Ford’s house was chock full of weird stuff and half of that stuff looked supernatural so it’s not like it would be that much of a surprise. 

In all honesty, he still hadn’t ruled out something supernatural for what had been going on with Ford. Not like he’d been able to rule out anything since he’d started actually thinking about how to find him though. 

In a matter of days he’d gone from not caring about Ford to caring a whole lot about finding him. If Ford hadn’t written him, Stan wouldn’t have even known or worried about this. Maybe Ma would have written to him about it though.

Ma’s letters had gotten a lot shorter and started showing up a whole less often a long time ago, but Stan still got them now and then. The few times she had mentioned Ford in her letters it had been with a quick, lone sentence slipped between sentences about something else entirely. She didn’t even use his name, it was always ‘your brother.’ Shermie was Shermie, but ‘your brother’ was only ever Ford.

_‘Your brother’s off at school now.’_

_‘Your brother’s got a research job all the way in Oregon.’_

The comments always stuck out in the middle of her words like a sharp tack. No matter how she tried to slip it in casually and pretend like stuff was fine, it still stuck out like a sore thumb. 

It was like some bad joke, except there wasn’t a punchline here. 

Stan smiled to himself, imagining how she would have told him about this. 

_‘I’ve been doing tarot readings on my calls now. Your brother’s missing. Describing the card’s meaning adds up so much time.’_

He tried to think about that, about how funny _that_ part of the situation would have been, how funny it _was_ because it was pretty much how it would go down if it happened. 

His own word choice eventually sunk in though. He hadn’t really thought of Ford as ‘ _missing’_ before. ‘Missing’ brought with it a lot of other meanings and implied situations than just ‘not home’ or ‘gone’ did. 

This whole thing with Ford may have looked bad... and it was, but if Stan could bounce back from going _missing_ missing a dozen times then Ford could do it at least once, right? 

All Ford had to do was be alive.

The thought sat heavy for a moment with half formed ideas that he immediately pushed away. He didn’t need to get caught up thinking about- about dumb stuff. 

Ford was just... missing. Ford was just missing, and all Stan had to do was find him. That wasn’t too bad. It was still bad and Stan was having a hell of a time since he’d gotten that postcard, but it definitely wasn’t the worst situation Stan had ever been in. 

Stan had food, a roof over his head, and so far nobody in town wanted him dead! If it wasn’t for the missing brother he was trying to find, he’d be doing great.

Even weird spirits messing with lights weren’t that bad. It just was giving him some bad ideas about what was going on here. 

He wouldn’t be surprised if something in Ford's house could mess with lights though. Between all his nerdy science junk and the nerdy supernatural stuff, there was something bound to mess with electricity. 

Stan had spotted more than a dozen homemade looking gadgets around the house, and he didn’t know what a single one of them did. He’d tried picking up a small remote looking thing in the kitchen and pressed a button on it. It had made a quiet hum noise, let out three angry beeps, then shot out a piece of metal into his palm and shocked him.

He stopped messing with the gadgets after that one.

So there was a good chance Ford had something hooked up that was zapping the power in the house weird. Or Stan had awakened a vengeful spirit from its resting place of some spooky vase he’d nudged.

Either one was fine by him. Honestly, he already had plenty of people that wanted revenge against him so one spirit that couldn’t even throw a knife was really low on his list of worries for his own life.

Heck, even thinking about some ancient cursed spirit or invisible wizard floating around him made him feel better. It was like having company around. Invisible, probably floating company like an annoying upstairs neighbor he never actually saw.

“Hey,” Stan spoke, his lips quirking into a lopsided smile. “If there’s a ghost here then knock over a chair or something.” He half joked. “Oh, or slam open all the cabinets at the same time. I always wanted to see something like that happen.” If he was in a haunted house he might as well make the most of it.

He didn’t hear anything though, besides the noises of the microwave. Eventually the timer went off and Stan popped open the small door.

“Eh, suit yourself.”

Once he finished eating, Stan got ready to head into town. As fun as reading barely legible notes were, he could only figure out so much from them and he wasn’t going to find Ford in that house. 

Either he’d find someone suspicious in town or someone suspicious would come after him if he stirred things up enough about Ford. If they tried to get rid of Ford then chances were good they’d try to get rid of him if he just kept bothering enough people about him. 

Stan picked his bag up and headed towards the front door. He hesitated at all the mismatching locks drilled into the wall beside the frame.

He’d already seen it, but it was still an unsettling reminder. A guy doing fine didn’t have seven different locks on his door. 

His ears buzzed in the silence, the stagnant air at his back pressing in on him. 

On a whim, he looked backwards into the dim hallway and reached for the light switch near the door, keeping his finger against it as he flicked it on.

The hallway illuminated in a soft warm light that did nothing, no changing brightness or unsteady flashing that could hint at anything else being here besides himself. 

If Stan just kept his eyes on the hallway, and not down at the mess near his feet or into the shadows of any of the rooms, it looked like a cozy wooden shack. It looked like a place that could have been nice. It would have been too. If the rest of the house didn’t practically scream that something was wrong. If Ford wasn’t...

Stan scoffed at himself, and flipped the switch back down again before undoing the locks on the front door to leave.

* * *

All things considered, it looked like a pretty regular small town, and for some reason something about that pissed off a _small_ part of Stan. 

Okay, maybe... half of him...

Okay, so it pissed him off, but he didn’t know why. 

Something about Ford choosing to come to a small town. He couldn’t care less to follow down the why of it though. Besides, that didn’t matter. A small town right now was great because it meant less places Ford could be holed up at and that he didn’t have to waste gas to get around.

He drove around once to get his bearings and hopefully spot something good. The snow had been plowed off of the roads and he’d seen a few people walking around on the sidewalk. No sign of Ford, of course though. The universe couldn’t make it _that_ easy for him apparently. 

The town had a pretty basic layout with everything centered around the town square and a water tower you could always see that made it easy to tell where you were in the town.

Stan parked at the nearest place to Ford’s house which turned out to be a diner on the side of the road not far from the outskirts of town called Greasy’s Diner.

The diner was in front of the woods and the building itself was shaped like a friggin’ log laying on its side. He went inside, the bell ringing as he opened the door.

It didn’t look too busy. There were a couple people scattered throughout the small diner, and only one waitress who was standing behind the counter. 

She had bright blue eyeshadow and shiny earrings that caught the light when she turned towards him with a smile, cheerfully greeting him. “Hi, stranger! What can I get for you?”

“Do you have a menu?” He asked, with absolutely zero intention of buying anything as he sat down on one of the stools at the counter.

She turned to point at a chalkboard that had a small list of items on it. No big surprise when he saw the same breakfast food every diner had. 

“I might need a minute.” He said. 

“That’s alright, take your-” She stopped suddenly, her voice quickly and excitedly picking back up. “Wait a second, I know you!”

Shit... _Shit_.

Stan laughed tensely, turning his face away and pretending to look at the arm wrestling machine. “Me? Ha, no way. I just got into town, see. You must be thinking of someone else.”

He hadn’t even been to Oregon before, how did she know-?!

“No,” she insisted, “you’re that- you’re the mysterious science man from the woods, right?”

Stan’s mind stopped running through where he could have seen her before, and he looked back at her again.

She lit up at his reaction. “I knew it!” She said happily. “I knew I recognized you. I’ve got great eyes.”

His own face recovered before he did, giving a practiced, winning smile. “Close! I’m actually his brother.” He stumbled over the final word.

"Oh brother, huh?" She said with interest, and then the light just behind her began to flicker, and Stan wasn't looking at her anymore. "Well, nice to meet you, I'm Susan-!"

"Does your light always do that?" He interrupted. 

Susan turned, catching sight of the flickering bulb. “Ohhh, I just replaced that one!” She took a step stool tucked away, and set it underneath the lightbulb, stepping onto it to reach the light.

As soon as she started touching it though, it stopped flickering, and she set her hands on her hips with a self-satisfied smile.

Then the next hanging light bulb started flickering. 

Amidst the waitresses’ commentary that he was tuning out, Stan realized the light was flashing a pattern he recognized. He pushed himself to stand, hands on the counter, staring at the signal. It wasn’t perfect, but it was there. Three short, three long, three short, and over again.

Whatever was doing that, it was signalling S.O.S..

When Susan's hands settled on the flashing light bulb, it stopped and the next light bulb over immediately picked up the pattern.

A small cry from his right finally broke his attention from the flashing bulb, and Stan glanced over. A light bulb hanging over a booth burnt out, and Stan realized all the lights past that one had gone out already, leaving the far end of the diner dim.

The next closest light, the one hanging over the counter, fizzled out then burnt out next. Stan glanced to his left and saw the same thing happening on his other side.

One by one, it kept happening, the lights going out slowly all in a line headed right to him. Indiscreet murmurs made it hard to hear the buzzing of fluctuating electricity. 

And still, still, the light bulb right in front of him was signalling S.O.S., flashing quicker, more insistent, as the lights burnt themselves out in quicker succession the closer they got to him.

Stan braced for an unseen impact that never came as the last few lights broke. 

As it reached the last bulb, the one that had never stopped flashing over his head, the bulb shattered. Sharp, thin sounds of glass hit the counter and floor, punctuated by Susan shouting in surprise. 

“Darn transformer!” Susan said, brushing her apron free of any glass shards.

He slowly shook his arms to throw off any glass on him and ran a hand through his hair. 

“The transformer?” Stan slowly looked at her. “The _transformer_ ? Transformers don’t do that. Lights don’t-” He cut himself off, glancing up briefly at the broken light bulb that had been flashing S.O.S. not even knowing where to begin thinking about _that_ yet.

She looked back at him, confused before awkwardly picked out a dustpan. “Well, sure.” She thought for a second, then added on as she swept up the glass. “Well- You know, the power used to go out all the time here. All across town! It’s probably just that starting back up again, actually!”

“Why though?”

She hummed. “I dunno.” Susan said as she dumped the broken glass into a trash can then carefully wiped the counter for any glass. “Always thought that it had something to do with whatever mysterious thing your brother was working on. It stopped a few months ago though. Maybe he’s working on something again in that house! Have you been to his house yet? I bet it’s filled with all kinds of experiments.”

“Not yet. I better go see him actually. I’m shoplifting something to eat anyway.”

“Huh?” She stopped cleaning to look at him. 

“Uh- I said I’m eating with him anyway.” He smiled at her. “Hey, has anyone ever told you you’re really good at wiping counters?”

She immediately brightened up at the compliment. “Oh, thanks! I wipe in zigzag patterns! ”

“...I noticed _._ ” He backed up to leave. “Well, anyway see ya.”

“Bye! Come back soon.” 

The door chimed after him once he left. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and turned out onto the sidewalk heading further into town.

Okay. _Okay_. 

His thoughts just kept swirling around over and over, none of them settling long enough for any of them to go anywhere. He already didn’t know what was going on here, and now? Now there was something weird in the mix that apparently wasn’t just stuck at Ford’s house?

Maybe it had something to do with all this, maybe it didn’t. Either way it wasn’t telling him anything.

“You know I’m kinda busy right now, yeah?” He muttered to the air. “You need help? Then actually say it or- hell.”

Stan stopped walking along the strip outside of some shop front. The large glass wall showcased some antiques set up front for display and past that there were shelves lined with more knicknacks. He leaned close to the glass, taking in a deep breath of air and letting it out to fog up the window. 

“Alright.” He said, writing a question mark into the fogged up glass. “Say something.”

He waited, watching the fogged spot. 

Instead of messages getting written in the glass, one of the lights on the strand lining the window began to flicker. You know what, fine, that worked too.

Three short blinks, S. No- four. No. No, it wasn’t- it wasn’t morse code. It was too erratic and fast. It was just... flickering.

“That’s nothing, you’re saying _nothing_.”

As if angered, the light bulb burnt out in response. Then three more of the lights started flickering then quickly burnt out. Again though, it wasn’t any kind of morse code, it just looked like a light going out.

Stan turned on his heel without hesitation and walked down the sidewalk. “Yeah, yeah, I got that the first time.”

The ghost- spirit, whatever it was - he didn’t care and he didn’t pay attention to it. As he walked, lights would dim or flicker when he passed by them. If he couldn't understand it then there was nothing he could do about it anyway. 

This was exactly what he needed, one more confusing layer on this whole thing, because _apparently_ now there was a spirit involved in all of this now. This was his life now. 

He couldn’t even care less if he was being haunted right now, at least up until it started throwing knives at him. What he did care about though was if it had anything to do with what was going on or if Stan really had just accidentally cursed himself when he was rifling through Ford’s junk. 

He also wasn’t sure why it would need help and even less sure what he could even do to help a spirit that he couldn’t even understand. He was half thinking it was just messing with him.

Why did it signal for help, then just decide to go back to ‘spooky flickering lights’ instead of using morse code again even if it was just S.O.S. over and over? It didn’t make sense. _Nothing_ since he’d gotten here made sense.

Stan twisted his knuckles against each other through the fabric of his pockets, ignoring the occasional flickering light. Eventually the lights stopped, taking the hint.

* * *

He might not have had any leads about where Ford was at, but he knew at least one place Ford had to have visited.

The library was a pretty small wooden building, cozy and by the looks of it empty too. Ford probably would have thought it was the perfect place. 

The second Stan pushed in the front door, he heard a buzzing to his left and the light in the small foyer flickered haphazardly. He rolled his eyes, ignoring the bulb burning out and kept walking inside.

A quick glance around, he didn’t see anyone around. After looking down a couple aisles though he spotted someone glancing over a row of books. Stan was about to dismiss it as another patron before they glanced over at him and jumped.

Their hair was pulled back into a haphazard bun that looked like it was gonna fall loose when they turned their head from whatever hair tie or clips that were holding it together. 

“Oh-! Uh.” They paused, looking at Stan, uncertain. “Ford?”

Fucking Bingo. 

Stan walked closer so he could talk with them. “Hey, really close. I’m his brother. I was actually looking for him.” 

“Oh.” They straightened up. “Sorry, uh... I haven’t seen him around here lately.” 

Stan hummed. “Hey, you work here, right?”

“Yeah. Can I help you with anything?”

“Yeah,” Stan said. “Yeah, could you tell me what books Ford’s got checked out right now?”

They agreed easily enough and led him back towards the circulation desk and turned to the rows of small square drawers on the back wall behind the desk.

Once they pulled out one of the drawers, the desk lamp Stan had only just really noticed started to flicker, and Stan shot a warning look at it. 

It stopped flickering. 

The librarian, Lee going by the name tag that was close enough for him to read now, turned back around, looking at a card in their hand. “Yeah, this is it.” They said, looking up and holding the card out to him. “Here.” 

As soon as Stan grabbed it the desk light suddenly burned out into a dark grey as it went out.

The librarian paused with their hand out, looking over at the lamp before focusing back on Stan again and retracting their hand. “Uh, anyways, this card has all the books he had checked out. They're all overdue..."

"Ha, yeah, that's Ford for you." Stan said with a short smile. “Booknerds, am I right?”

Their mouth opened a couple times like they had a couple different things to say before they finally settled, frowning at him. “They’re _really_ overdue...”

Eh, that’s on him for trying to talk about nerds to a librarian. “Yeah, yeah, right. I’ll tell him when I see him.” He looked down at the card, quickly realizing the dates on the books checked out. 

"Hey, nothing's been checked out in the past few months." Stan said, looking back at them. "You got a newer card?"

"That's it." They answered simply. 

Stan half smiled, feeling a laugh curdling and souring in the back of his throat. "Come on, ha, you're telling me he hasn't been here for what, weeks?"

Quietly, they looked back at him with a half concerned expression. 

The silence quickly stagnated the air around them.

He cleared his throat and checked the card again, reading it all the way through this time. “Okay then...”

It looked like there were still five books checked out. Most of them had some kind of occult or supernatural title like 'Exploration of Demons & Spirits’ except for one that had a really long title about neural oscillation and electricity. His thoughts went dead in the water, trying to make sense of that one.

Who went and decided a title could go on for two or three sentences?

Even the short titles didn’t stick out to him much past them being about supernatural ghosts and fairies. No matter how he turned all the titles over in his head all he could take away from it was that Ford was reading up on ‘supernatural stuff and science junk’ which covered _everything_ Ford studied. 

Stan heard the tail end of a question, “-ng alright?”

“Huh?” Stan looked up to see Lee watching him. 

“I said, is he doing alright?” They asked again, brow slightly furrowed. 

Lee had only been the second person he’d talked to Ford about today, but It felt like Stan was getting asked the same annoying question for the thousandth time. This person had to know _something_.

“How'd he look when you last saw him?" Stan asked instead.

They paused awkwardly and glanced aside, meandering with their words. "The last time I saw him... he seemed like he was in a hurry. Maybe he had a work deadline? I think he was stressed out.”

“Did he ever mention some guy?” 

They paused. “I’m... sorry, what?”

“I said, did he ever mention some guy?” Stan repeated himself. “When he was stressed out, did he ever talk about anybody. Or have any friends? Hell, did anybody ever come in here with him or seem like they were looking for him?” 

Lee’s eyes widened before their whole face shut down into an even expression and they took the card back out of his hand, busying themselves with putting the card back in its place. "I actually don't know." They said in a clipped tone. "Sorry."

Stan wanted to reach over the desk to pull them back by their shirt. He knew, he _knew_ he was asking suspicious questions and he should have been playing it cool. They were hiding something though. 

“Hey, buddy.” Stan said, waiting for them to turn back around.

They tensely turned back towards him with a polite expression. "Is there anything else I can help you with?" Their fingers tucking into the edge of the check out desk.

"Cut the bull." Stan told them, well beyond irritated. “Whatever, you know, I don’t care, but whatever it is I need to hear it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“ _Nope_. Try again.”

“I don’t-” Lee put up their hands. “Look, he was getting really suspicious about people last I saw him, but I don’t know anything about- whatever all this is about.”

Stan felt something in him, some tiny thread just snap.

“You have to know more than that.” Stan said, not even looking at them now. “You _talked_ to him.”

He started to walk around in a short circle and gestured as his voice climbed, getting gradually louder. “This was the goddamn library, he was probably here- what? Countless times. More than- more than the friggin' grocery story or any other stupid building in this whole town outside of his own house!”

Stan pulled his voice back down, straining his voice. “Someone has to know _something_ about my brother.” He said, finally looking back at them. 

If even the damn librarian barely knew anything about Ford...

Lee was watching him, fidgeting with their hands. “Alright... Uh.” They pushed their hands flat onto the desk, continuing calmly. “Look, he was here a lot, yes, but he didn’t talk about himself a lot and... and I really don’t know why he stopped showing up.”

“He never mentioned a name...?” Stan tried, hoping for something.

“No. Have you tried asking his neighbors or friends?”

Stan shut his eyes for a moment, all of his energy just leaving him all at once. “He lives out in the middle of the woods, and... and if he has friends I don’t know who they are or how to find them.” 

Stan opened his eyes back up again. “I’m just trying to find him.” He said. “I know you just work here or whatever, but I don’t know anybody that knew him and I don’t know where he’s at. Just...” He breathed in, feeling his ribs pressing in on him, “gimme something here.” 

They looked at him quietly and then their eyes shifted downwards in thought “He did come here once with someone a couple times... but that was- half a year ago?”

“You know who?”

Lee shook their head. "I don’t. He came every now and then, without your brother, but I haven’t seen him in a while either. He was tall and lanky though." 

“Anything else?”

“Uh.” They shrugged their shoulders. "He... might have had blonde hair? It was too long ago, I’m sorry, I really couldn’t tell you.”

A guy. A guy that was _maybe_ blonde.

“Great...” He said.

“You know- he picked out textbooks mostly. I could check through some name cards and see if maybe I can spot him.”

Stan perked up a little. “You really think you would recognize him by some books he checked out?”

“Well- maybe.” They said. “The textbooks don’t get checked out that often except by students so it’d stick out.”

Wait.

“You said textbooks? Do you remember what kind?”

Lee steepled their hands underneath their chin, squinting in thought for a long moment.

“... Math?” They finally said. 

“So definitely another nerd then.” 

That sounded like someone Ford could be friends with, also could be someone that was behind this. Either way if Stan could find him, he’d consider that a win.

“It’ll take me a couple days to check through the cards though.” Lee said.

“You’re actually going to do it?” Stan asked, a little surprised. 

“I mean, it’s not like you’re gonna beat the guy up or nothing, right?” They half joked, smiling.

That depended on what the guy was like.

“Oh, course not.” Stan scoffing and waving his hand nonchalantly. “Ha, no. No, I’ve never even gotten into a fight.” He said casually, swinging his arms then planting his fists against his side.

A brass knuckle fell out of his coat pocket and hit the thin carpet with a dull thud.

Stan swiped down to pick it up, putting it back in his pocket before the librarian could see it. “Paperweight.”

“You carry a paperweight around with you?”

“...It’s Ford’s.”

“ _Ahh._ ” Lee nodded their head in sudden understanding. “Okay, well, anyway, try coming back here in a couple days.”

“Will do.” Stan turned to leave with a wave. “If you see him then just let him know I was looking for him.”

* * *

After long enough of poking around town, it’d turned dark and he’d gotten zero leads after asking practically half the town. Nobody besides the librarian had even seemed to know Ford’s name or anything about him. People only seemed to know him as the mysterious man who did science out in the middle of the woods. 

Even the seediest looking place in town, a bar that didn’t even look bad, hadn’t given him anything. Well, he could get a job smuggling some dogs, but he’d come back around to that offer later. 

He’d even wandered around the town after it turned dark and the streets had cleared out in the hopes someone would just jump him for asking too many questions. The town stayed quiet and he remained untouched even through barren streets and dimly lit alleyways though.

His faint reflection followed beside him in every darkened window he passed by as he headed back towards his car at a sluggish pace. He got so used to the accompanying shadow beside him that he didn’t even glance over when he saw it out of the corner of his eye anymore.

Which was why it took him an extra moment to realize that there was a second shadow casted onto the brick wall beside his own, moving at the same pace as him.

Stan spun on his feet to see the culprit, already pushing his fingers into the brass knuckles in his pockets.

He just turned to an empty street though. He glanced back again to the wall, only seeing his own shadow there, alone.

“Where..?” He looked down both ends of the street, not seeing or even hearing the signs of another person. Stan double checked again thinking maybe he’d missed a trashcan or something someone could have ducked behind when it finally hit him.

If there wasn’t anything physical around him, that didn’t leave a whole array of options.

“Hey.” He said. “Hey, buddy, I saw you.” 

The spirit, because what the hell else could it even be now, hadn’t done anything for a long time now. The flickering lights had sometimes started as morse code that never went past two letters and the rest of the time just looked like flickering. They always ended with a burnt out light bulb no matter what though, and after the millionth time he’d figured the thing was either purposefully trying to mess with him. The lights messing up around him had been steadily lessening throughout the day, and he hadn’t seen anything for the past couple hours so he thought the thing had finally gone.

Instead, it was apparently still hanging around him. “Hey, I’m talking to you!”

The low light washing over him began to flicker and Stan looked up at the lamp post responsible. It flickered (not morse code) then burnt out.

Stan lifted his hands. “Ooooh, spooky lights. Talk to me when you got something new, pal.” He turned to keep walking to his car.

He could hear buzzing lights behind him and ignored it. He was fully prepared to ignore it too until he saw a lamp post at the end of the street falter. 

It only flickered once, staying on, then the next lamp post coming towards him flickered as well, before moving onto the next one. 

Stan sighed heavily.

“You already did this bit before too, buddy.” Stan said, as the flicker kept heading in his direction through the lamp posts overhead. 

The light flickered overhead of him, and then a light behind him flickered, going past him this time. Confused, he turned to look behind him. 

The flicker of light bulbs was heading in a clear path back along the street.

After a moment, it happened again, the lamp post over his head flickering once and then the flicker went in a line down the street and back around a corner further into town.

He perked up, watching it happen again.

“You better be actually showing me something.” He warned, following the faulty lights.

There wasn’t any answer, no surprise there, but he kept following the trail anyway.

Stan was frustrated and _tired_ of shooting in the dark all day, and right about now he was willing to check out anything out of the ordinary for some answers.

He wound up back in the middle of town again and saw the trail turning around the corner into town square. Before he could make it there, the street lamp at the corner shattered with an explosively loud buzz of energy.

Stan slowed to a stop and the flickering lights that were still trailing in the same direction picked up speed, urgently flashing in a fast line to the corner building, some dance studio.

He ran to the dance studio, trying to avoid stepping all over the glass shards on the sidewalk. The studio had large windows that made it easy to see inside, but he didn’t see anyone or anything suspicious inside.

Stan paused and checked for a door when he heard the buzz of electricity further on, and looked around the corner that led into the town square. All the lamp posts he could see from where he was at had gone dark.

He pushed against the building’s edge, running into town square, glass crunching under his feet every time he went under another dark lamp post until he went into the street.

“What the hell...?”

More than half the square was shrouded in darkness from broken lamp posts. To his left was the only side of the square that had any lamp posts left, and he could see them still breaking.

He heard the distant buzz of electricity and tinkling of glass hitting cement as the remaining lamp posts’ lights continued shattering, one after another. The first one he’d seen had bursted within a second, and it had been loud, but he swore these were quieter and taking longer to break. After a few more broken lights he was sure, with each one it was taking longer like the thing was running out of energy.

The trail of flickering lights had since stopped by this point so Stan just kept watching the breaking lamp posts.

With only a few lamp posts still shining, a lamp post weakly flickering for long enough that Stan wound up walking towards it. Even once he got to it, it was still going. Within seconds, the flickering eventually died down to nothing.

He looked at the building in front of him.

“Ice cream shop’s super important, huh?” He asked, slowly walking under the lamp posts that were still lit, no flicker from any of them. 

Maybe something _was_ here, but he also wasn’t going to break into five different shops to find it. He didn’t even know what he was supposed to be looking for though. 

He continued wandering around the square. Nearly every window to every building was dark. The library, the museum, the shoe store, all of them. If there was anything or anyone suspicious around here then he wasn’t seeing it.

Stan stopped, watching one of the still shining lamp posts. “You ran out of juice, didn’t you?”

After a moment, the lamp post dimmed slightly, but so briefly Stan would have missed it if he hadn’t been staring right at it.

 _Alright_. He rubbed his face with his hand.

“ _Again_ ,” he said, starting the walk back to his car again, “this vague, ominous shit isn’t helping me understand whatever you’re trying to get across.”

He got into his car and turned on the radio, flicking through stations until he found something playing music he liked. The music station he’d picked out turned to quiet static once he was inside the woods though.

His car made its way along paths that wound around trees that took him further and further away from town. Driving to Ford’s shack was a lot easier this time, following his tire tracks still leftover in the snow from when he had left.

Stan sighed, pushing buttons for a station that was strong enough to make it through the thick trees. He eventually let it go, leaving the static on so he wouldn’t be driving in absolute silence. It filled the car with sound and made it feel less empty.

Driving through the woods was actually pretty nice when there wasn’t a blizzard threatening to push his car this way or that.

A garbled voice came through the static, a few words unintelligible through the static before it went back to silence.

He continued to drive, reaching for the knob and turning up the volume.

Sound came from the radio again, syllables half mangled. “ _-t_ **_an_ ** _-_ **_e_ ** _y._ ” It sounded like-

Stan slammed on his breaks, car sliding a few feet on the snowy path before stopping. He stared at his radio, cold needles pricking up his forearms. 

The static fluctuated, then more sounds came as a distinct voice forced its way through the static. 

“ _S_ **_t---_ ** _\----. ---l_ **_o_ ** _?_ **_St_ ** _an, s--- -_ **_a_ ** _n-_ **_\--_ ** _\- -e-r ---? --_ **_\---_ ** _-._ ” 

A cold weight settled into Stan’s stomach.

“...Stanford?” 


	4. One Sided Conversations

Ford's voice kept warbling out of the car radio now, launching into a whole conversation, but every single syllable was just static. Ford just kept going though, and the only thing Stan could understand was the cadence of his voice. 

Stan was looking past the radio, the past couple days becoming disjointed and twisted and this moment turning into a six foot pit dug into the dirt in front of him. All his guts were missing, emptied out from underneath his nose.

"You..."

The postcard.  
The kitchen light.   
The diner. The library. The shadow.

"-you asshole!" 

The staticky voice stopped. 

Stan shouted at the radio, his rage bubbling over, suddenly there like it had been stewing underneath just out of sight. "You send me a postcard, and then you play around with lights all day?! And now-?"

His eyes were open, but he wasn’t noticing his actual surroundings anymore.

"You were supposed to just be missing, Ford!! You're supposed to be missing, not-!" His chest seized up, the word locked up there and shackled so it couldn't get out.

"You can't be-" Stan slammed his fist into his car door, driving himself back into his body in his car in the middle of the woods. He pointed down the path in front of the car. "You were supposed to be there- at your fucking house! _You were supposed to be there, Ford!!_ "

"I got here- I left as soon as I got your damn postcard! I got here within two days! I only took two fucking days! I only took _two fucking days_ and you were already gone!"

He seethed, shaking. 

No direction, nobody to grab or punch, no physical obstacle around him. Not even a face to look at. It was all just.... _nothing_.

Stan shut his eyes, the white noise of unchanging static stretching out endlessly and surrounding him.

"Say something, damn it."

The static fluctuated on a short sentence, not one he could understand, but he knew even if he could hear it that it wouldn't have been enough. 

Stan breathed in and held his breath there, counting in his head then slowly letting it back out. He spent a couple moments like that, sitting there and knowing Ford was there, but not how he was supposed to be.

Finally, he opened his eyes and let his head fall back against the headrest, loosely holding onto the bottom of his steering wheel. The familiar sight of the roof of his car and the map he kept up there greeted him, inches away from his sight and not giving him any answers. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted them right now.

Ford's voice barely broke through with a word that Stan didn't understand. Then again, and again.

The static kept obscuring his voice, but soon enough it became clear that whatever Ford was trying to say it was the same word or two, two syllables, that he kept repeating in a measured tone. 

" _\----s----s. ---------s. -ow-------. ----sta---_."

Stan lifted his head up again to look at the radio. "Ow... stats?" He tried. "What?" 

" **_\------air-_ ** _." ---------s. -ow-------. ----sta---_."

"Airs. Ow, airs." He sighed, rubbing his face with his hands then leaning onto his steering wheel. He rested his chin on his forearms, trying to pull the word together. "Ow, _stairs_...." 

If Ford fell on some stairs...

" **_\--wn_ **."

"Own-” He paused as the word finally clicked together. “ _Downstairs_. You're saying downstairs?"

Ford's voice pitched upwards, the static changing faster and again the entire sentence being unintelligible, but it was a confirmation. 

If he didn’t know any better he’d say Ford sounded... excited. Why would he be though?

"At your house? What's downstairs?" He asked. "I already looked through the entire shack." 

" _\----s--ir-._ " _Downstairs_.

"Yeah, I heard you. Down-"

Ford interrupted him, emphasizing. " **_\--wn._ ** _s-----._ "

He was still just saying the same word. “Yeah... the ground floor.”

“ **\---n.** ” The second part of the word didn’t come.

“Down...” No way. There’s no way, not unless- unless Ford was a paranoid loner in the middle of the woods that had an underground floor with an entrance he probably found a way to cover up.

Stan sat back up straight. "There's an underground floor."

The static rumbled with a long sentence that was starting to get hard to even just detect. This already started as a pretty one sided conversation, but at this rate he wouldn't be able to understand anything Ford said in a minute. 

"Gimme a minute here." He said. "It's not exactly getting easier to understand you, trying to think of the best thing to ask here."

There was so much about this, the part about Ford, that Stan couldn’t even really think about yet without feeling like he was dropping into nothing. Whatever came after that bit of nothing, wasn’t good, and if he didn’t have to ever go there in the first place then he wasn’t going to.

He wanted to know what had happened before though, what had been going on when Ford had sent him the postcard. A dozen different questions and he finally had someone that knew the answer to them, but he'd be lucky to get two words out of him that Stan could actually understand. 

For all he knew too, this might be the last time Ford could even say anything which would mean Stan only had one shot at this. He couldn’t know unless he actually asked, and if it did turn out this was it then he’d wasted his only question on something stupid.

Somebody besides Ford had to know what had happened though. He would just have to find whoever that person was though. This could just be the last time he’d ever hear from Ford was all, and that- that was a stupid thought because now his mind was spinning in a different direction about questions to ask. Questions that had been burning at the back of his mind for years instead of days.

If this was the last time he ever talked with Ford...

And of all the questions, of all the questions he could possibly ask that could be answered with one word at least, his mind just kept coming back to the same stupid one, changing the words of it around every turn. 

The static fluctuated momentarily. 

_‘Did you ever actually want to go sailing or had it only been...’_

“Just making sure it’s not a stupid question,” he muttered in a delayed response to the static.

 _Don’t ask a question that you already know the damn answer to, Stan, come on_.

Stan took in another breath, shoving the stupid questions down and back under water again.

“Okay.” He said. “So, there was someone behind whatever this is, right? You barely mentioned the guy, but you gotta know who I mean. ‘Him’ or whatever, what’s his name?” 

No answer.

He waited a few moments before checking in. "You still there?"

The static changed for a short moment.

"Okay, well do you know this guy’s name?"

A very short blurb of static belatedly answered.

“Great, then give me a name. First, last, nickname - whatever works best.”

Again though, Ford wasn’t answering the actual question, unchanging static greeting him.

" _Stanford,_ come on. It’s not even like this guy can even touch you now.”

The static picked up with a long unintelligible sentence.

"Yeah, can't understand literally any of that, Sixer. You already told me you know his name so come on. "

There was a long silence, but finally Ford said something short.

" _-i-- ------_."

"Uhh... try again." At least it was a short name.

" _-i-- --_ **_ph_ ** _\--.... ---h--._ " The more Ford tried, the further and further away his voice started getting until it was just changing static.

Eventually there was just silence as they both sat in a quiet acceptance that Ford was out of words. 

“That his full name, right?” Stan could tell the pauses and that there were two words repeated, but that was it.

A low warble of static.

“Well, I know it’s a short name then.” He said. “Better than nothing.” 

Once he got downstairs then chances were Ford had written this guy’s name down somewhere, right? At least there had to be something down there.

"I still gotta find the stairs going down to the basement anyways, right?" He took his foot off the break and began the drive back to the shack. "Come on." 

* * *

Stan had kept the static on for the rest of the short drive though he didn’t hear anything else come out of it.

He stepped onto the front porch and opened the door to step inside. As far as he could tell, nobody had busted in since he’d left which was good and bad. Good because he didn’t have to worry about getting into a fight while he was this tired, and bad because well if he had someone on him then he could follow them up to whoever was behind what happened.

Stan locked the front door after himself and stayed on one side of the hallway as he went back through the shack.

He hadn’t really thought about how quiet it’d been here beforehand, but after the car ride back it felt eerily quiet without the white noise of static.

After lighting a fire in the fireplace, he went back into what he considered Ford’s specimen room since it had all the jarred things inside and looked around until he found what he was looking for. 

Beside an empty knapsack was a pile of hiking supplies scattered over the ground with a two way radio sitting on top of the pile.

Stan flipped on the walkie talkie and turned up the volume all the way. There was a quiet buzz of static from the empty station it was already on. It was a constant noise that at least filled up the silence. 

Plus if Ford could talk again...

Stan clipped the small radio into the hem of his pants. “There.” 

He checked around the outside of the shack first with a flashlight, kicking snow as he went. The only thing he found outside though were a few snow covered barrels that were already empty anyways.

Inside, he started walking around the ground floor, trailing his left hand on the wall as he went to feel for hidden creases. Every couple of feet he’d try knocking to see if anything sounded hollow. 

He left all the lights on as he went from room to room, except for the kitchen, of course. He had to sweep the flashlight over the walls and floor and take extra time in there to make sure he didn’t miss anything just because it was dark.

“I probably should have expected you’d have a hidden basement.” Stan said eventually, talking as casually as if Ford was just sitting down in the same room as him. Even if there was no way Ford would have even been that casual with him there, neither would have been this casual talking to each other.

“I’m pretty sure you always wanted a hidden room. I mean hey, what kid didn’t want a hidden room, but you’re definitely the kind of guy that would still be thinking about it years later. Get it the first chance you could.”

“Guess I just didn’t think about you having a whole hidden floor though. Gotta say you outdid yourself, Ford.”

“Would be a lot nicer right now if it was easier to find though.”

Stan stifled a yawn in his hand. Even if he found the door tonight, he probably was only going to take a quick look for anything big and obvious. He didn’t know what, but just to make sure there wasn’t something important in plain sight.

He paused as he came into a room, looking over to the large shape to his right as he turned on the light. His hand left the wall as he went over to it.

It was the same size as a door, the same height and width, just a lot thicker. It looked like just some big computer that had been pushed against the wall, covering in blinking lights and buttons, but...

Stan knelt down next to the machine, to look near the bottom where it met the wall. The baseboard was cut out where the machine began, letting it fit snugly against the wall.

He knocked around the entire thing, but the only place it sounded hollow was above the thing, but that could have just been an air vent. If this wasn’t the door downstairs though, he wasn’t sure what was. 

He moved through the rest of the house all the same though looking for anything else that could be a door, and found nothing. If there was a hatch, he wasn’t spending tonight moving all the piles of junk and lifting up rugs until he found it.

Stan went back to the tall machine, sighing in front of it. He absently started pressing buttons to see if it’d do anything.

“You didn’t tell me what was downstairs, you know.” He said. 

Honestly, he wasn’t that far off from just taking an ax and chopping into the shack’s wooden floor to get downstairs. Not tonight, but maybe tomorrow.

The buttons beeped with every one he pushed, but there was no way for him to tell if he made any progress or not so he just kept doing it as he thought.

“This is...” Stan trailed off, his silence cushioned by the static from the small radio still sitting on the right side of his hip.

“This isn’t what it looks like, is it? Not this gizmo. I mean... I don’t know, I guess I just mean all whatever happened to you.”

Really, he just meant Ford. He didn’t want to believe it. 

“If you’re actually dead,” he said, finally saying what he meant. 

He half smiled, trying to put on a good face for the joke. “Gonna make me sound like a jerk if you’re not though and then I go saying you’re too weak to be a ghost.” The smile slipped away before he was even done with the sentence. 

“Never even gave me a cold chill, but you broke all those lights.” He hadn’t written anything in that fogged up glass either and that would have been easy.

“Stuff just doesn’t seem like it’s stacking up right.” He said, finally stopping with pushing buttons and letting his hands rest inside of the pockets of his jacket.

Stan let the relative silence go for a long moment.

“I don’t think you’re actually a ghost.” He eventually admitted. “Whenever I try to think of you as a ghost in my head it just doesn’t fit. Dido with you know, being dead. It just doesn’t fit together right.” He explained.

“I know that’s stupid, but it doesn’t. When I first thought about that in the car, everything kinda just...” Nothing. 

Nothing and wrong.

He lapsed back into silence again, the buzz of static from the radio filling the space that he should have been able to fill with some loophole. Some ‘gotcha’ that could prove where it didn’t add up and why Stan’s feeling had just been his intuition and street smarts shining through. 

All these years of bad situation after bad situation that gave Stan enough insight to say without a doubt that Ford couldn’t be dead because of some key detail, some definitive clue or sign of proof, but he didn’t have anything like that he could say.

“...It just didn’t fit.” He said finally.

Tired, Stan finally left the room, turning the light back off as he went off to eat something before bed.

* * *

"Try it again." Ford said calmly. 

Stan found himself standing back in front of the metal door again, but this time Ford was standing to his right.

Ford was wearing a long beige trench coat, and a loose tie that for whatever reason he still had hanging around his neck. He looked tired, but like he’d spent all night doing something tedious and had since settled into a routine. 

It wasn’t really what Stan had been expecting, honestly, considering all the notes he’d gone through beforehand. He looked calm for a guy that wrote those notes.

“Stanley?” Ford looked over at him.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

Ford let a slow breath out through his nose, pointing to the buttons at shoulder level. 

Stan looked at it. “What about the keypad?” 

“It doesn’t look like that.”

Stan paused. “What?”

Ford caught his attention. “There’s only six buttons on the keypad, remember?”

Yeah, he’d been standing in front of it for long enough. “Yeah, I remember. It’s not my fault that...” as he gestured back at the door in front of them though, there were only six buttons there, but every button was covered in some strange symbol. “...Huh.”

“Can you open the door?” Ford asked.

“What kind of a question is that? You’re right here too, Sixer, plus it’s your door.” He replied.

Ford paused for a long moment. "Well, you already know it anyway, so go ahead."

Stan rolled his eyes and punched in a code. 

The door beeped with a green light. He could finally actually figure out what was down there now.

A metallic voice talking as it began to swing open. " _Access gran-_ " It stopped as Ford grabbed the door by its edge before it opened far enough for Stan to see inside and swung it closed again.

"Hell, I was hoping that would work." His shoulders slouched and he pushed his glasses up to rub the crease they’d made in the bridge of his nose. 

"What are you talking about? It did work! It literally just opened up." Stan gestured at the now closed door. "Come on, we need to get downstairs, Ford."

Ford looked over at him. “You’re dreaming, Stanley.” He said point blank. “More importantly, that wasn’t the correct code.”

Stan scoffed. "If I’m dreaming then how come I’m not on a beach?"

“Because I don’t know how much I’ll be able to do tomorrow so I’m trying to show you the code while you’re asleep.” Ford then added, a hint evasively despite the clinical tone, “and I didn't think being on a beach would be conducive to your memory retention once you wake up.”

“It’d be a lot more memorable if I was doing this on a sunny beach.”

Ford ignored the comment though. “I’m hoping if you do it enough times that you’ll remember at least one of the times.” He said, before inputting the code. “Watch.”

He did it a couple times, each time accompanied by the hissing sound of hydraulics releasing and he gently bumped the door back for it to close again. Ford then gestured for Stan to try.

When Stan followed after with the same code, there was the hissing sound of hydraulics and Ford shut it back with his foot.

“Good, you’ve got it, now just keep doing it.”

Stan kept putting in the code, the code always getting the same response and eventually he just accepted that Ford was going to keep closing it so he started just bumping the door back himself. He made sure to complain even as he did so though. 

“Can’t you just write it down for me?” Stan gestured out with a free hand. “Not to mention you’re here anyway, you know.”

“Two things.” Ford started calmly. “One, I actually tried that already and let’s just say writing things down in your dream didn't go well. Second, I’m here now, but I won’t be like this when you wake up and actually need the code.”

“Because I’m dreaming.” Stan lightly mocked.

“Tell me what we were doing right before we walked into this room then.” Ford said. “Because if you weren’t dreaming you would at least remember that.”

“We were...” His mind blanked though when he tried to remember. All he could really come up with was them being at the library or something, but even that was vague and he couldn’t remember why they had been there or what they were doing. “Huh.”

“Welcome back to lucid dreaming.” Ford said with a tired smile. 

“Then you’re just part of my dream which means I’m not even learning anything here.” Stan argued. “I didn’t know the code before so trying to learn it from myself doesn’t work.”

“I’m not part of your imagination, but I won’t be able to prove that anyway. You’re just going to have to try the code when you wake up and see for yourself.” Ford casted a suspicious glance around momentarily. “That being said, it’s only a matter of time before my luck runs out.”

“What do you mean?” Stan asked.

“I was hoping you'd remember him at least partially...” Ford muttered, fidgeting.

He continued talking, an uneasy expression passing along his face. “There are certain beings that can make their way into your dream and twist it. One of them, Bill, is going to be especially unpleasant when he shows up. You shouldn’t trust anything you dream tonight, regardless of who it looks like is talking to you, and that includes myself.”

“That’d include you talking right now and everything you just told me though.” Stan pointed out.

“That’s exactly right.” Ford responded, nonplussed. “The code itself would, from what you already knew beforehand, have little risk.” He shrugged then. “I could just as easily be Bill right now though so use your best judgment.” 

So what? Either he tried to believe what he was told and it was wrong or he didn’t and then he didn’t actually get any information. Then again this was a dream so it’s not like he’d really gone to sleep expecting to figure anything out. 

Still, if this was actually Ford then it opened up a whole slew of possibilities.

“So... is it you?” Stan asked. “Actually Ford, I mean.”

“For the time being.” He answered, “but again, you shouldn’t believe me.”

“Well, too late, you already told me to use my best judgment.” Stan said with a crooked smile.

Ford opened his mouth to argue, the expression clear on his face before he finally let it go, focusing back on the keypad as Stan kept entering in the code.

Ford broke the silence shortly after. “Do you think it’s me?”

Stan thought about it for a long moment. 

He did act like Ford, and he didn’t what kind of con a ‘dream being’ or whatever would try to pull. Outright saying ‘don’t trust me’ probably wasn’t the go-to though. He’d never met the thing though so he didn’t know how good it was at acting yet.

This was also probably the sort of thing his brain would cook up for him right now though. Ford standing next to him okay and alive, or as whatever spirit he was coming to help him out.

It felt like Ford though, and for the time being he just wanted to go with his gut instinct that it was.

“Use your best judgment.” Stan suggested back, a smug smile on his lips. 

Ford shot a brief look over at him. “That’s not very helpful...” 

“Well, now you know how it feels.” He said. 

“That’s fair enough, I suppose.” Ford said begrudgingly.

Stan hummed. 

They went back and forth for a long time, entering the same code so many times that he couldn’t imagine forgetting it. Hell, if nothing else, he’d probably just remember it from muscle memory.

Even if it wasn’t the most exciting dream he’d ever had, it was still kinda nice. Normally dreams about Ford wound up blowing up in his face before long.

“How long you staying for?” Stan eventually asked.

“Until my luck runs out.”

Stan snorted. “Aren’t you a ray of sunshine?”

“As long as I can then.” Ford amended. “Better?”

“It’s a little less cryptic.” Stan jokingly meandered. “Still ominous though. Could use a little work.”

“Dream that I said it less ominously then.”


	5. Downstairs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :3c

Stan ran, the sound of feet pounding and shouting echoing off of stone walls following after him.

He entered a circular room lit by torches, several sepia-toned corridors stretching out all around him. He paused, turning around in the middle of the room and glancing over for any differences between all the paths that looked like every single path he'd seen tonight.

A gunshot rang out, and as Stan ducked it flew past him, breaking a chunk of stone away from the wall. 

Cursing, he glanced back down the hallway with figures in the distance coming after him before picking a random path and sprinting down it.

He took sharp turn after sharp turn, trying to lose them. After one turn, the hallway turned to carved stone and hardened dirt, a dug out tunnel with wooden beams spread out along the way to support it and stop it from caving in.

A dim blue light came from the end of the tunnel and as he got close he could see a figure in a long trench coat pass by at the end of it.

Already, Stan was at the end of the tunnel and whipping around the corner. “Fo-!” He skidded to a stop as Ford, who'd only been a couple feet around the corner, jumped away in time before Stan ran right into him.

Ford whipped around to look at him, a sharp look on his eyes and everything about him askew and honestly, just looking a lot worse than the last time Stan had seen him. 

“Hey. So, heads up," Stan said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder, "they’re after us.”

“Who- No.” Ford’s face scrunched up momentarily, before quickly hardening again. “No, I am not doing this again.” 

Ford moved back as Stan got out of eye sight from the tunnel. 

“Not doing it? Great, I want that option too then.” Stan gestured outwards with both arms, momentarily peeking back down the tunnel. “So, how are we doing the ‘not doing it’ option?”

Ford scowled at him. 

“I know I make some hilarious jokes, but I’m being serious when I say I really goddamn want that option, alright. I want out of here.” Stan said, emphasizing the last bit. “Tonight’s been...” 

Falling towards pit spikes, hacksaws cutting through and hitting bone, and way too many people that knew him. (Not to mention how Ford kept leaving him behind, and even when he was around...)

“Tonight’s just been bad, alright.” Stan said. “So can we ditch on finding this thing or not, Sixer?” Ford had been the one to insist he had to be down here, and if he was tired too maybe that meant they could get out of here already. 

Ford paused a moment before evenly asking. “What exactly are we looking for?”

“The- You were the one that said we needed to come down here in the first place to find the thing.” The only reason they were even down here in this mini hell was because of Ford.

“Sure.” Ford said in blatant suspicion and disregard. “So, what is it then?” 

“What is this? A friggin’ pop quiz? Some machine thing. Again,” Stan pointed at him, “you were the one that said we needed it and, oh by the way, you still haven’t even told me what it looked like or what it's for!”

“I know I’m not looking for ‘some machine thing.’” Ford said firmly.

Stan turned around in a frustrated circle to keep himself from just screaming at this point. “What the hell are we doing under the museum then?!”

“This isn’t even under the museum, and I wouldn’t be looking for anything here.”

“Jeez, okay. Where are we then, huh? _You tell me_. Come on, Ford. Where are we? What are we actually doing?” He questioned.

Ford shifted on his feet and glanced aside in concentration.

“What? You said we aren’t under the museum so if we’re not under the museum then where are we? We can’t be nowhere.”

“I didn’t say this was nowhere.” He argued back, visibly uncomfortable and still not looking at Stan.

“Great. Great, I’m glad we can agree on that." Stan fired back sarcastically, not caring anymore about keeping his voice down to keep from getting caught. He was so goddamn tired of running around like this without understanding anything that was going on. "So, come on then. Where are we? Better yet - What's going on, Ford?” Heasked insistently. “Tell me what’s actually going on here!”

“You-!” Ford snatched Stan by the front of his jacket, a hostile expression on his face that Stan immediately recognized. The last time when Ford had looked at him like that he’d had no problem telling him what he thought, but this time his words stopped almost immediately. The one accusatory word still burned in the air though, backed up by some unspoken damnation.

Ford’s face twisted in frustration, and just as quickly as he’d grabbed Stan out of nowhere, he’d already let him go again. He stepped backwards, moving several feet away from Stan.

Stan took a step forward, half thinking for a moment that Ford was gonna just go off again and after that too. “What the hell was that?!”

“This couldn’t be the museum underground anyhow because it’s under my house.” Ford said, attempting and failing to sound neutral.

“Okay, so now this is your house again, I don’t actually care." Stan said, hands waving to emphasize. "I want to know what’s going on! What is with you?” He asked. “Why are you acting like I did something? All I’ve done has been avoid getting shot for the past fifteen minutes, Ford!” 

Ford stayed decisively quiet this time, brow furrowed as he he evenly stared back at Stan.

“If I did something, then just-” Stan ground on his teeth. _He didn’t even know what he did, why Ford kept.._. 

“Just tell me what I did! I know you’re dying to anyway so just do it already! What did I screw up this time, Ford?” Stan took a couple steps forward.

Whenever Stan took a step forward, Ford took a measured step backwards to keep the distance.

Stan stopped, fists at his side, and even still Ford just... wouldn't say anything. He just watched him with a wary expression.

“ _Why_ am I even down here with you when you keep ditching me?” He finally asked.

Ford finally broke his silence, but he didn't get far. "I-"

The cavernous room around them cracked loudly, stone splitting apart and throwing them both off balance. The crashing noises and sputtering of machinery came quickly after it, as huge pieces of metal fell to the ground. Stan caught onto a wooden beam for support, scratching his hand on rough wood as he stumbled for balance before it could happen again.

The sound of familiar static, made him glance back over at Ford. 

Ford was half fallen onto the ground, bracing himself up by his arms and one foot sunk into freshly dug dirt. Looking pissed off, he opened his mouth to yell to Stan, but the only thing that came out was a loud static.

All at once, the floor underneath Stan’s feet was gone and he clutched his nails into the wooden beam, but it just fell with him as he plunged into the darkness, the sound of static from above quickly fading.

* * *

Stan jerked awake in a sweat, encased in way too many blankets that were smothering him. He kicked himself out of the cocoon of blankets for cold air as he woke up. 

Gray light streamed in from the small window, casting the whole room in gray, the fire in front of him long since burned down to ash and black embers. It had to almost be afternoon by this point.

His mind slowly turned away from the nightmare and into reality which- hell, which wasn’t that great either.

Stan rubbed his face with his hands and slowly pushed himself off the ground. He took a shower to wash off the sweat and changed, happy to let the majority of the nightmare fade from memory. 

It felt like it had lasted forever and honestly had been a lot more draining than how a nightmare usually went for him. Of course, it’s not exactly like he had a lot of fun stuff on his mind lately, so it wasn’t that weird, he guessed.

On his way to the kitchen, he picked up the two way radio again. He held it in front of his face, the radio still off. 

He sighed, placing it on the counter, his hand staying on top of it for a long moment before he finally turned it on again. The white static filling the kitchen reminding him of falling.

Stan put his hands out. “So, you got anything or am I gonna have to break out a woogie board to hear from you?” (Not a ghost.) “Err- a flashlight. I know you can mess with lights.”

He waited, eventually lowering his hands again as nothing answered him. 

“Maybe...” Maybe Ford just needed more time then he’d be able to talk, maybe he’d be able to do morse code fine on a smaller light, maybe he just was past the point of being able to talk at all.

“You know, maybe something’s downstairs that can help.” Stan finally said, clipping the radio back at his hip again.

He ate through a couple bites of canned brown meat for breakfast, the sound of static making him lose his appetite really quick. Of course, he could just turn it off, but- but if Ford had a spare second where he could talk and Stan had the radio off then he’d miss it. Stan was pretty happy with his dumb luck, but he also had ridiculously bad luck too that bit him in the butt as much as possible.

Stan walked back to the back room, flicking on the light and standing in front of that stupid, metal door again.

“For the record,” he started casually, “if I can’t get this open, I’m just breaking through your floor or the wall here.” Man, did some property damage sound really good right now. He was pretty sure he'd seen an ax at some point. 

“If you didn’t want property damage you should have given me a key or something.” 

Stan paused for a moment, an idea crossing his mind because he did have one code. It was stupid though. 

Then again, if he was just gonna press random buttons to see what worked then why not try the one he’d used in his dream. What was it going to do anyways? Make a bomb go off?

He didn't remember most of the conversation he'd had during the dream in front of the door, before the dream went south into nightmare territory, but he sure as hell remembered the stupid code from it. 

“Alright,” he muttered, pressing the last button, “open... sesame.”

A hiss of air came from behind the door, and Stan startled, taking a step back as the door slowly swung open.

The thick metal door gently stopped with a gentle thump as it hit the wall, and in front of Stan was a wooden platform. 

Stan stepped inside and glanced down the uniform planks leading downwards, dimly lit and leading right to a metal grate door.

Just like that. It was open.

“Ha!!” He bounded down the stops, excited. “Now that’s what I-” 

The static suddenly came to life, and a scrambling sound, causing him to stumble to a step where he was, putting a hand out on the wall to stop himself.

“What-?” He paused. “What is it?”

There was nothing along the walls besides- well, he spotted a greasy hand mark with six fingers, but that was it. Even if it did turn out to be some secret entrance, he'd check it back out later. 

"Ford?" He waited, with a frown. He took a step backwards then forwards again, but there wasn't another sound this time so Stan continued downstairs.

At the bottom of the steps, he came face to face with an elevator. He pressed the call button and waited as he heard the grind of gears bringing the platform up.

The doors opened with a ding and Stan stepped inside. “Okay, well, I’m just gonna go- uh.”

The small elevator didn't have a lot in it, but it had one more button than he was expecting. “Okay, so you had two whole secret floors. So which one-”

He got cut off by the radio, once again coming to life and this time very loud, but he heard a hint of Ford’s voice. Ford could talk, not a lot, but he could!

Stan left that to deal with later though because as good as it was, he still couldn't understand Ford at all.

“Okay, let me try this.” He said, putting a hand out. “Speak up when I’m over the right floor.”

He hovered his finger over the ‘3’ first and the static started to scramble with a sort of higher pitched tone.

“See? Easy.” Stan said, pressing the button. 

The static fluctuated harshly as the elevator started winding downwards.

“Relax,” he said, “I meant easy as far as talking like this can get right now.”

There was a gentle beep as he reached the bottom floor and the doors opened, low red light spilling into the elevator with him.

In front of him was a small room lined with all kinds of machines and tubes and switches. He slowly walked past them all, looking at them as he went. There were so many gizmos and monitors, few of which had any kind of label of course, and it quickly got confusing what any of them actually did.

Then he saw past a clear observation glass and into a cavernous room with a massive triangular structure looming high. There was a circular hole punched through the middle of it and wires going from it to some metal rings in the middle of the floor. 

“Okay. Okay.” Stan said. “So, what the hell is that?”

He wasn’t surprised to hear nothing answer him this time though. He hadn't really been expecting an answer because whatever that answer was it was probably really complicated and nerdy.

“Jeez.” He stepped through the side door, the air dropping several degrees and making a chill go up his spine. Without the heat from all the machines running, it was freezing this far underground. 

He slowly walked towards one of the metal rings on the floor, feeling out of his depth. It wasn't like he didn't know Ford worked on stuff like this, there'd been loads of gizmos upstairs, but this was different. It was big and he didn't know what it did, but if it needed all the stuff from the other room to work then it was for something huge.

The radio quietly fluctuated strangely, and Stan paused where he was at, but the sound continued. 

He waited for it to stop or for Ford to speak up, but after a while it just sounded like actual interference. 

Stan glanced back at the huge centerpiece in the room. 

Stan took an experimental step backwards, the noise disappearing, and then forward again only for it to return again. 

As he took slow steps towards the machine, the interference got louder and gradually began to sound more corrupted until he was in arms reach of where the structure was bolted down into a support column. 

After a while it started to sound like... chatter bleeding through. All kinds of noises that ran over and under and through each other, and amidst all of it he could hear what had to be voices. Then what sounded like a peal of unnatural laughter.

Stan stepped back, keeping his eye on the structure with a weird feeling that he couldn’t place. Okay, well - it was creeped out. The feeling was 'creeped the hell out.' The thing about though was that it was also giving him more ideas about what this thing was, and maybe even about Ford.

If he could hear- well, he wasn’t really sure he should be calling these voices ‘people’ - but if he could hear them, then what if this had something to do with what or wherever Ford was at. He could hear both of them through the radio so maybe it was the same place.

Ignoring the interference now, Stan walked around the huge room looking for anything else that stuck out, but he quickly gave up because the only thing else around was a couple of work tables with power tools on them.

“Alright,” he said, walking back through the control room. “Ford, what-”

The static fluctuated sudden and sharply, and Stan stopped where he was at, near one of the several machines.

He paused, looking to his right and the static flared up with a high pitched noise when Stan put his hand over the top of the panel of a screen, some buttons, and a large lever.

His heart rate picked up and he looked down, slowly hovering his hand over everything there, waiting for noise when he heard a light bulb shatter to his left.

Stan pulled his hand back sharply, looking around. “Jeez! So, we're shattering lights again?" He asked. "We're back to shattering light bulbs like they don't make sharp shards of glass go everywhere? Great. You know there's other ways to get attention with..." 

He noticed a blinking light in a familiar pattern then. Where the elevator was set back and away from everything, the light bulb beside it was flashing. Three short. Three long. Then over again.

A bulb right near his head buzzed with electricity then burnt out and the radio at his hip screamed, a haywire noise. 

He winced and turned the volume down slightly.

All the lights near him from the blinking and whirring machines started to flicker in a line towards the panel he was already beside. 

Stan glanced in confusion between the two sets of lights, the ones right where he was at, then the one all the way back again at the elevator signalling even faster now for help. The lights beside him stopped for just a moment, then the elevator light burnt out, and they resumed again pointing him back to that panel.

The radio blared, the staticky noise coming out more intense and higher pitched than he’d heard it in the car, missing the smallest hint of resemblance to Ford’s voice; and it finally clicked.

Stan took the radio off of his hip and hit the off switch on it, cutting off the static shredding over itself, leaving the room in a near silence aside from the quiet buzz of electricity and whirring fans.

There was something here besides Ford. 

Stan turned, walking back towards the elevator, ignoring the insistently flashing lights pointing in the opposite direction. 

The lights that had kept burning out whenever they’d started flashing in morse code, that had been stopping Ford every time he tried to send a message. 

Stan pushed the button to open the elevator doors again and got inside. “That thing has been talking all over you since yesterday, hasn’t it?” He asked

The light bulb inside the elevator weakly flickered.

He let out a slow breath, still thinking and running back through everything that had happened yesterday. It made sense when he thought it had just been a spirit, and even less as Ford, but with Ford and something else both trying to use the lights it made a lot more sense why Stan kept getting mixed signals. 

As long as this thing was around, he had virtually zero chance of reliably getting to talk with Ford. It hadn’t been around during the drive back to the shack thoug so there had to be some windows of opportunity here. Problem was Stan didn’t know when those were. 

“Alright,” Stan said, “then you talk over it too, Ford, and when it’s gone I’ll be able to actually hear you.” 

There wasn’t a response, but at this point he knew he couldn’t really get anything right now. Not with that thing hanging around too.

“I’m just gonna start calling it bastard since that’s all I know about it.”

The light bulb in the elevator burnt out, and Stan smiled slightly. 

“Oh, hey there bastard. Glad to see you're on board with your nickname." He said with a self satisfied smile, pressing the button for the second floor.

He actually didn't know how much they could se

In all seriousness, this bastard was a huge roadblock, but there had to be something important on this other floor. Maybe something that would help him actually figure out what was going on.

The elevator dinged and this time it stopped in front of a fancy, wooden door that looked like it belonged inside of an old library instead of several feet underground some shack in the woods.

A hint of light spilled out from the cracks around the door frame, and when Stan turned the golden knob it was to a fully lit room and he blinked as he stepped inside the room that was a blur of colors, adjusting his eyes to the sudden change in light.

When he was able to see, his heart stopped in his chest. A string somewhere behind his ribs snapping and the corner of his eyes burned.

“No.”

It was an eclectic mess, but at the back of the room in front of a desk chair was a figure on the ground in a wrinkled, white shirt and dark pants. 

Ford, laid out on his back and looking as though he’d fallen and never gotten back up or even moved. 

Stan’s legs buckled underneath him and he blindly reached for the door, but it only swung further open when his hand hit it and Stan was in the middle of a huge void that had somehow gotten inside him and was eating him from the inside out. 

“No.”

His body weight shifted forward and he broke into a sprint down the room, dropping onto the floor beside Ford’s body and pulling himself closer to him from where Stan had landed. 

He grabbed onto Ford’s shoulders, hands locking into a harsh, white knuckled grip on him.

Where Ford’s face was resting on the ground, the lens of his glasses was cracked. His face was gaunt and pale, the purple circles under his eyes sticking out against the too white skin. 

Stan had been yelling Ford’s name all over the house, he could have heard him. Stan had shouted loud enough, even this far down he would have been able to hear him. If he was- If Ford had just been down here this entire time...

“Ford-” Stan’s voice cut out, his throat tensing up too much to let anything else out, not even air.

Slowly, Stan leaned down and pressed his ear against Ford’s chest, listening. 

A silent second passed by, then another. Then he heard it. A weak thump.

A rush of air left Stan’s lungs. He listened to that same thump repeat itself again after another moment, and a couple more times as the world righted itself again. 

Stan lifted his head back up, and shook his brother. “Ford. Hey, Stanford. Up and- Hell, never mind. Hospital time, let's go." 

Stan stopped trying to wake him, because there were a lot of obvious reasons why that wasn’t happening right now, and instead moved to pick him up from the ground. He put his hands underneath Ford’s body and leaned against the spiral staircase to lift Ford with him as he stood back up.

Adjusting his hold so he wouldn’t drop him, Stan took off back to the elevator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I briefly considered ending the last chapter where Stan found Ford before he got to confirm he was still alive, but then I preemptively took psychic damage for thinking about it because _man_ would that have been a cruel cliffhanger.
> 
> on the fr, the amount of support y'all have given for me this fic has been beyond encouraging and please just know even if I don't respond to your comment that it /sincerely/ means so much to me when I see it.
> 
> Which there's still a couple more chapters, but I'm saying this now because I kept meaning to reply to all the comments and I always want it to be something meaningful and sldjfas;mg long story short you can see I haven't replied to that many, but they still mean so much to me. I keep them in my inbox for weeks before finally sending them to a comments folder. So thank y'all.
> 
> Also I really love seeing all the little theorizing and I especially get excited to see people on the right track, like TheHauntedLyre on last chapter saying Ford's body was downstairs. 
> 
> p.s. i'll just go ahead and say this so nobody worries about the next chapter starting with something happening mid-drive, they get to the hospital fine, i promise.


	6. A Next Step

Ford was on a bed in the middle of a small square room, hooked up to an IV and a screen that showed his vitals. Colored lines bobbed up and down beside fluctuating numbers, four sections neatly sharing the screen and the only number or line Stan understood was the one at the top. 

A red line that spiked up every other second and a number that stayed in the lower 40s.

Stan hesitantly stepped through the door frame, shutting it after himself and seeing the nurse that’d led him back to Ford already half way back down the hall. 

The only thing in the room that wasn’t on wheels was a small counter in the corner with a sink set into it and a cabinet hanging overhead. 

Stan pulled the chair over to the bedside, just keeping a hand on the back of it and remaining standing as he took a look at Ford under the white light covering the room. It was the first good look he'd actually gotten without anything to really distract him. No thoughts scrambled apart by dread or panicking as doctors quickly examined Ford on a gurney while throwing out terms and stats that were bad, had to be bad, but how bad Stan hadn’t known.

Ford still looked pale, hell especially in this light, and his face looked thin but he didn’t look dead. Maybe that was just because Stan knew he was okay now, but he gradually started to relax. 

“You still don’t look good, you know.” He said, continuing off of a conversation they’d be having right now if Ford could have talked. 

“Oh.” Stan turned on the radio still clipped at his hip, and turned it back up again. “You’re here, right?” 

The white noise of the radio softly broke with a short confirmation. 

Stan let out a breath. He couldn't know for sure who that actually was, the bastard or Ford, but he figured if it was this quiet on the radio then the bastard was at least sticking out of it for the most part.

“Okay, good.” He said. “Kinda weird to just be standing around your uh ‘unconscious’ body if you’re not even here.”

He looked back at Ford’s body again.

“Actually, I take that back. It’s still weird.”

He took another breath, and let it go again, before sitting down to sort through his thoughts. 

Stan had found Ford, just two parts of him.

Not that finding Ford wasn’t a huge relief, it was. A weight had finally loosened its way out of Stan’s chest, and every second didn’t feel like it held such potential for doom and gloom. 

Ford wasn’t dead. 

Stan turned his head to the side to watch Ford’s body for a moment, seeing the slight rise and fall of his chest before looking straight ahead again.

He looked like a ghost, talked like a ghost, acted like a ghost; but he wasn’t dead.

The problem wasn’t finding Ford. Not anymore. Now it was figuring out how to get Ford ‘back together.’

“I don’t get why you can’t just-” he made a face, waving his hand, “I don’t know squish back into your own body again or whatever.”

Something was stopping Ford though, probably whatever had split him apart from his own body in the first place. The confusing thing about that though was that Ford had just been downstairs in his own home when it had apparently happened. That or something had moved Ford downstairs after the fact and just left him there to literally rot.

And that didn’t even get into everything else that had been downstairs. 

The second floor looked like a pretty normal study, he didn’t at least remember seeing anything that out of place there, but the third floor...

A triangular, metal structure looming above him as staticky voices scrambled and _something_ had laughed. Then flashing lights and an unfamiliar, high pitched noise screaming for him to push something on that control panel. He still didn't know what the hell that would have done either. At the very least that would have been more time with Ford literally dying upstairs though.

Stan’s head was quickly feeling overinflated thinking through all the new clues, and just tried to focus on the what he'd literally found, rubbing his face.

“That machine’s downstairs gotta be some kind of bad news, right? I mean hell, you stopped me from messing with it. I’d put my money too that this was your big ‘problem machine.'” Stan said, looking over to Ford’s body without thinking to talk to him, and uncomfortably looking away again. “It’s gotta be able to do something bad at least.”

“What I don’t get,” Stan said, sternly focusing his eyes on the wall and crossing his arms, “is how you ended up like this.”

“If someone else did it to you why would you be downstairs? Why not ditch your body out in the snow if they wanted to leave you for dead?” Maybe someone could have done it to Ford without getting that close, like something remote or getting a vengeful spirit to do their bidding or whatever. Stan didn’t know! 

“And what does that heap of junk downstairs even do?!” He questioned, throwing out his arms in front of him. “And if it _is_ your problem machine then-”

A knock on the door cut him off, and Stan straightened up from his chair, resisting a sideways glance before the door opened and a nurse came in. 

* * *

Stan had been expecting to get some answers, and he did get a couple. Mostly just that Ford was very malnourished, which he already knew, and that they would give him some time with the IV and everything to recover and that he’d probably wake up once his body got some nutrients. They were wrong about that, but hell it helped anyway so he wasn't going to correct them.

Everything after the short snippet of information though had been question after question. Stan had to omit some details just so it wouldn’t sound too suspicious.

They had all been pretty standard questions though, until the nurse got to one that just didn’t make sense. 

“Can you tell us anything about your brother’s hearing loss?”

“What?” Stan glanced back at Ford’s body as if to ask him directly, an already formed bad habit that he couldn’t break, before looking back at the nurse. “Uh, I mean sure he’s got a problem listening to anybody else, but last I checked his ears worked fine.” You know, give or take 13 years ago. 

“Where’d you get hearing loss from?” Stan asked. “He’s not even awake to hear anything.”

“Uhh.” The nurse paused, flipping through some paper and reading something, before he set the clipboard onto the foot of the bed. Then he leaned over from the other side of the bed, reaching for the side of Ford’s head that was by Stan.

When he pushed back the hair from behind Ford’s ear, he revealed a glint of metal. “No, it’s there.” He said, before angling Ford’s head a bit and framing the piece of metal with his hand. “Look.”

Behind Ford's ear was a small, tear drop shaped piece of metal that looked like it was just sitting on top of Ford’s skin, like a thick magnet sitting on a fridge door or something. 

“What is it?” Stan asked.

“Well, there's really nothing else it could be besides a hearing aid. It just looks a little different than we’re used to seeing. So, we thought maybe you could tell us about it?” He said. “We didn’t have anything on record about a hearing loss either.”

Stan would have noticed if Ford had had issues with hearing when they’d been growing up together, right? If Ford had lost hearing after high school though, would Ma have even told Stan?

“Wait. You guys didn’t know about that?” Stan asked, looking back at the nurse. “What about like- I don’t know maintenance or getting it checked or whatever? He’s lived here for years.”

The nurse let go of Ford’s hair and turned the head back again so it was in a naturally resting position. “Yeah, that’s... kind of why I’m confused. There’s nothing about any ear or hearing problems in his chart, so he had to have gotten this installed sometime after his last visit here.”

“Okay, well when was his last visit here?” 

After a moment of thinking, he just picked up the clipboard again, taking a fairly long moment turning papers over until he apparently found it. “A few months ago for a fall injury...”

That was probably about the same time when the waitress had said lights around town had been acting up. Whether or not it had anything to do with that though didn't really change much of anything.

The nurse continued on though, asking more questions before eventually leaving. All that was left to do here was just wait. Except waiting wasn’t actually going to fix this.

He didn’t feel great about the idea of just... leaving Ford’s body behind, after everything it’d taken to find him- it- the body, but the sooner he left the sooner he could maybe get some answers. At least now, he had somewhere new he could look.

“Okay,” Stan said, getting up, “I’m getting something to eat and heading back to your house to see what's downstairs. Where you were, not the other floor.” He didn't think there was much else of anything besides the machine on the other floor anyhow, nothing he wanted to check out again unless he had to anyway.

“And I’m guessing you’re coming with because hanging around your own unconscious body sounds morbid as hell so come on.” Stan waved a hand for Ford to follow as he walked to the door. As he shut it after himself, he stole another glance back at Ford’s face. 

After a quick stop by the cafeteria, and depositing some stolen snacks into the hospital room, he was driving back to the shack.

* * *

At some point the wind had shut the front door again because Stan knew for a fact he’d been too busy carrying Ford out to the car to care about the house of all things. All the lights were still on as Stan had left it and even the ominous metal door was cracked open.

Stan descended the stairs and the elevator stopped at the still open door to the study, grate doors sliding open as they stopped. 

He stepped into the warmly lit room, actually taking the moment this time to glance around. 

As much as the entire house had looked so scattered and messy, the damn room Stan had found Ford laying in almost starved to death was different. 

It still didn't look great, but it didn't look like a haphazard war zone of pen, papers, and everything in between that had gotten in the way of the two.

The semi organized stacks of papers and open books weren't flipped over onto the floor or slid down against a wall. It was more like just a busy workspace with bookcases lining the walls towards the back of the room where there was a spiral stair case and a metal disk sitting in front of a huge screen at the back wall. White sheets covered random parts of the room.

Stan walked back there, pausing when he reached it, walking over towards one of the hanging white sheets covering a part of the part of wall that didn't have a bookcase or desk shoved against it.

"What the heck do you even have these up for? You friggin' made this place look like you died, Ford." He said, gesturing at the sheet as he addressed the air beside him.

"Had to make every room look creepy." Stan muttered, reaching for the sheet.

With his fingertips grazing the rough fabric, he was stopped him in his tracks by Ford's voice.

“ ** _Stop!!_** ” Panicked and rumbling at the edges with static, the word ripped out of the radio.

Stan jerked his hand away form the sheet, his hand feeling like static as he took a step away for good measure in alarm, lightly bumping into the metal staircase. Ford's voice had never been that clear before. 

Stan was gonna get gutted by knives jutting out the wall, he knew it. This place was booby trapped.

“Ford?! Ford, what-? What is it?” He was stuck between looking at the sheet and the radio at his hip.

After a moment with no disaster, his heart stopped beating in his throat. He hadn't set anything off, at least yet. “Earth to Ford?”

Instead of Ford’s voice nearly shouting again, he was met with a quiet rumble of static.

“Okay, what’s going on? Am I about to get stabbed here or what?”

Another short sentence, that ultimately didn’t really say anything, but unhurried enough that it was obvious the urgency was gone.

“Okay, so- what? Is this a trap?" He asked, truly relaxing now because Ford had calmed down so he must be safe as long as he didn't touch it. It had to be something serious though. “What’s under the sheet?”

There was a pause then a single word, that Ford only had to repeat a couple times for Stan to get, but...

“Eyes...?” Stan asked slowly.

A new different warble came from the radio, a confirmation.

Stan stopped. “Eyes? Are you kidding me? That has got to be the creepiest, _goddamn_ answer, Ford.” He gestured out at the sheet in front of him, now uneasy that there was going to be some huge blinking eye on the other side of it as he imitated a casual tone now. “‘Oh? What’s under the sheet? Eyes. Yeah, just eyes, you know, the _usual_.’” He ran a hand over his face. 

Okay, okay, just relax. Relax.

Did this make sense? No, but should that have surprised Stan?! At this point?! Why the hell would it?! Sure, eyes on a wall, why not. He didn't know what that meant, but why not!

Maybe there were literal eyes on the wall. Maybe they were eyes that would steal his own eyes or something. That'd be just great. This floor just had _all_ the attractions! His brother's dead body, cursed eyes, the works! 

The radio blurred out a short line.

“Yeah, yeah.” He sighed out. Right. Relax.... with some 'eyes' right in front of him.

Ford repeated again though, evidently trying to actually say something, and Stan tried to pull his emotions back in so he could pay attention.

Ew Ca-ook. Ew Can loo. Ew can look. _You_ \- 

“... I can look? Stan asked.

Ford rumbled out a confirmation.

“You freaked out when I tried to look not even a minute ago!! What do you mean I can look?!” Stan snapped, looking at the air at his side again as though Ford could answer, but of all things Ford was the most responsible to actually explain himself for that comment.

There was a longer bout of silence now, no answer, of course why would he ever expect answers, and Stan wanted to ram his head against the wall. “You barely talk and you _scream_ at me to stop, but now it’s ‘oh, you can look.’ You got to be kidding me!”

Ford spoke, as much as he could without screaming apparently, again.

Bear. In a bear... "Tell _me_ you're not trying to tell me something about a bear right now?”

Thankfully, that apparently wasn’t the answer and Ford continued repeating the word.

Imb ---ed. Im bear- “Embarrassed.”

A short confirmation let him know he was right, but he didn’t know if Ford meant he was embarrassed now because he’d overreacted or he was just embarrassed about what was under the sheet. 

Stan glanced back at the sheet, and slowly reached out for it, pausing with his hand about to touch it. "I am going to pull the sheet up and look." He announced slowly. "And if you scream in my ear again I'm turning the radio off." He gave Ford another moment to interrupt him again. When he didn’t, he pulled the sheet back enough to see what was behind it.

He was met face to face with a large woven eye half shrouded in dim light, slowly he started to see the other details from the tapestry. The eye was centered in the middle of a large triangle that was holding fire in its hands. It screamed ominous and combined with Ford's reaction...

Stan let the cover drop back down. 

Just breath, Stan. Just breath.

It was probably just a weird piece of decor that didn't have anything to do with this. That's all. Ford just was embarrassed because it looked creepy. It was just one of the countless random, weird things that filled up Ford's house- that just happened to be down here... on the floor that looked different from the rest of the house...

“Just uh, just go ahead and tell me that doesn’t have anything to do with what’s going on.” He said, with closed eyes.

No response.

Stan's gut started to turn and he turned around to put the covered eyesore at his back, only to be directly facing the spot Ford's body had been laying which actually made him feel sick right now. He put his hands to his face trying not to focus on his surroundings so he could calm down.

Ford did this sometimes, it was okay. Sometimes he didn't answer right away or didn't answer until Stan phrased it a different way. 

“Say something if that doesn’t have anything to do with what’s going on.” Stan tried.

Silence. 

Okay, yeah, no response. Stan could still work with this. Ford could just have gone radio silent, wouldn't be the first time. Plus, he probably burned up a lot of energy with that first shout.

“Alright. Say something if that _does_ have something to do with what’s going on.”

Scrambled words filtered out of the radio, instantly destroying the lie Stan had been crafting for himself.

Stan’s hand pushed through his hair and he gritted his teeth. “Okay. Okay, yeah, that’s-” Fuck- Just relax. Just relax. It was just one thing. Just one thing. This wasn't a big deal.

A knife was dragging over his last nerves though, snapping string after string and his face twisted up as he failed to calm down.

“Ford, what does that even mean? How does that- Why did you say ‘eyes’ for that? How does that have anything to do with-?” He bit down on his tongue, and tried to swallow down the endless questions. The far too many questions that only kept piling up with no answer in sight and no actual help.

Trying to stay silent only let all those damn questions circle around in his own head though, over and over all Stan had done since he'd gotten here was ask himself questions he didn't know the answer to. First it was why Ford hadn't shown up, then it was where was Ford at, and now- now it was too many questions because it wasn't as simple as just finding Ford anymore, now he actually had to understand enough to figure out how to fix it.

His voice sharply picked up. “Damn it, Ford. Why can’t you just-?! Why can’t you just talk to me and _tell me_ what’s going on?!”

Except, Stan knew. Of course, he knew. He knew why and he knew he was beating a dead horse and he knew- he knew, he knew, but that didn't change anything!! It didn't help him at all!!

Stan locked his jaw together so he wouldn't ask any more stupid questions like a dumb kid whining because their dad only ever yelled at him, Stan was just asking for something he couldn't get. 

His shoulder went numb and he kept his hands pulling his hair to ground himself.

A weird machine, his brother as some spirit, a spirit bastard getting in the way, a tapestry that probably had something to do with the Illuminati. Hell, maybe the Illuminati were after Ford. He might as well find that out at this point.

Stan just- He just needed... He didn't even know what he needed anymore, he just knew he needed something and he knew he just wanted Ford back again, actually back.

A flashing light in front of him caught his attention and he saw a desk lamp at the work table flickering back and forth.

Stan swallowed around a lump in his throat and let go of his hair, taking a moment to just focus on the light which didn't follow any morse code, just flickering for attention. 

It was a clear next move, see what Ford was trying to show him. That was easy. That's all Stan needed to worry about right now, just the next step. “Okay,” he said thickly, getting his voice back to normal within one word. “Alright, what's over here.”

The surface of the metal workbench was half covered in different metal shaped pieces, screws, small circuit boards, and tools. The other half of it was covered in open books and papers, some scrunched into balls. There was a bin underneath the desk overfilled with more balled up papers that littered the floor underneath the desk. Behind the desk, there was also that huge screen with controls underneath it which was made pretty inaccessible by the desk that he realized was out of place in this room. After a quick glance around, he still wasn’t sure where the desk had been moved from, somewhere else in the huge house.

Stan pulled over the rolling chair with Ford’s trench coat laid over the back and sat down to start looking through everything here. He used the back of his hand to knock some of the metal shavings onto the floor so he wouldn’t get metal biting into his forearms. 

“Hey, there’s not a chance I’m gonna go ghost down here too or whatever, right? Cause that’s seriously the last thing we need right now, or I need in general ever.”

The desk light, which had stopped flickering at some point when he'd been scanning over the table, started to flicker again slowly in morse code.

N-O

“Okay, good, got that going for me right now at least.” He found himself looking back again at where Ford’s body had been not that long ago, feeling uneasy so close to it. “Did that happen while you were down here?”

Again, the lamp flickered.

L-O-O-K

“I’m gonna. Just one for yes, two for no. Did this happen when you were down here?” Stan asked again, gesturing at the bare floor. “If it happened somewhere else then you got dragged back down here then that opens up a whole other can of worms. Well-” he paused. “This is a can of worms, no matter what, I just want to know which can of worms I’m dealing with.”

The light flickered once. 

Down here it was then, which narrowed down the possibilities, but also made his mind start spinning onto what possibilities were now leftover. “While you were down here. Was there someone else with-?”

The light was already flickering again before he could finish his question.

L-G-K-D, which didn’t make sense by itself but it was close enough that Stan was able to understand.

“I’m looking, I’m looking!” He said, even picking up the first paper in front of him to show as much. 

As he started to go through papers he could tell a lot of them were literally just pages and pages of equations, but there were some diagrams too. Stan’s eyes quickly locked onto a blueprint with a familiar tear-dropped shape on it. He pulled the sheet out from where it was half hidden under a book to look at it.

It was a blueprint of Ford's 'hearing aid' except the top of the paper didn't say hearing aid. It said ' _Endodermis Neurowave Deflector_ '. There were a few different detailed sketches from different angles of the tear-drop shaped machine, the inside of the casing, and some kind of circuit board layout.

Now, he wasn’t a nerd, like some people, and he wasn’t deaf or even hard of hearing though a lot of people during his life had liked to yell at him like he was. There was no way in hell this was just some hearing aid though.

“You made this?” He asked rhetorically, not expecting the actual answer to come in the lamp flickering once.

‘Yes.’

Hey, this ‘yes or no’ questioning could actually help as long as the bastard didn’t show up. If he hadn’t heard Ford clear as day before he would have suspected it was the bastard too, but it looked like they were on a lucky roll.

Stan quickly scanned through the blueprint for any clues about what the thing actually did beside ‘deflect neurowaves.’ On the back was a short sentence that, for once, really straight forward answered his question.

‘ _Improve design for anti-possession measure, plate too invasive._ ’

His mind blanked.

"Ha..." The sound came out with a twitch of his lip like an aborted attempt at a smile.

Sincerely, how many goddamn turns was this situation going to take?

“So uh...” He started. “Possession?”

The light flickered. ‘Yes.’

“Like- actual ghost possession or whatever?”

‘Yes.’

“Okay, hell. That’s- hell.” He thought for a long moment, trying not to get bogged down in the now _five_ different parts to this.

The next question, that's all he had to worry about right now.

“Can I get possessed?” He asked.

There was a long pause, and instead of the light flickering the radio sputtered out some staticked message. 

“I’m gonna take that as a maybe.” Stan said, before continuing on. “This doesn’t- You know this doesn’t make sense, right? I mean- what the hell does this ghost and possession got to do with...” He slowly trailed off with the idea that maybe ghosts and possessing a body weren’t actually that far off from his brother as some kind of spirit and _not_ possessing his body right now.

The radio warbled though as Ford talked, saying something a bit winding apparently.

“You know I can’t understand you, right?”

A short response for confirmation.

Stan snorted, but he couldn’t deny that at least hearing Ford now was better than impatiently waiting at the hospital in silence or driving in silence or walking into an empty house in silence, regardless if he actually understood what Ford was saying. 

“I know you’re not a ghost, but we’re going to have to pull out a woogie board before too long, we can’t do this forever.” Stan joked, not realizing the possibility he’d implied until after the joke was already out. A possibility where this was just how Ford stayed.

“You think this uh,” he struggled for what to call it, “this whole ‘you’ thing can be undone, right?”

The radio blurbed out a short syllable that eased Stan’s mind. “Good. Had to make sure you were still on the right page with me." He cleared his throat. "So - how the hell do I actually do that exactly?”

The radio rambled again, another long sentence. He hadn’t been expecting an actual answer though so that was fine. 

Maybe Ford could spell out just some one word answer, something to get him on the right track.

“ **Bill!** ” Heated and short, the radio crackled suddenly to life as Ford shouted the name. 

Stan whipped his head around like he was going to see someone standing in the room with him before realizing it must have been another spirit that had just showed up, or something like that that only Ford could see. Regardless, it wasn't good.

“Bill...?” The bastard probably, or there was a bastard number two now. Hell, there could have been tons of spirits that messed with him and Ford. 

“Who the hell....” He trailed off though as the plain name felt distantly familiar, giving him pause. Sure any common name would sound familiar, but this felt like something he knew already. Or at least something he should have known.

It slowly started to pull together, pieces drifting in. He’d heard that name when he’d been dreaming last night, he’d heard it from Ford. It had really been Ford in his dream, which- yeah he should have guessed since the code had worked on the door, but he hadn’t really even thought about that since everything that had happened immediately after going through that door in the late morning.

He'd have to think later about what that actually meant about Ford that he could enter dreams. 

Stan tried to grasp onto the buried information from the dream, like a memory bleached out by the sunlight of the day. He could imagine Ford saying the name fine, but it was trying to remember what he said around it...

He could remember Ford half turned away from him, distracted and in his own world rambling through unhinged words, something about Bill, but what Stan remembered from it was the hopelessness- no. No, it was how unrestrained the emotions were, raw and out in the open, like Stan wasn't there... like he was completely alone even with Stan standing right there in front of him.

Then Ford hadn’t... believed him. About something. Stan couldn’t even remember what he’d said to Ford. He just remembered Ford, beat down, looking at him with a simple, sad expression as he’d rejected something Stan must have said... and the tiny, twisting guilt Stan had felt in response, that he felt an echo of now.

It wasn't enough for anything. Stan still had so much of the story missing and so many mixed messages and feelings, but he had to do something about it- he knew that. 

Stan came back to present, taking another look around, like maybe there’d be a chance he could see a ghostly face down the spiral staircase or a figure at the elevator door. It would have been creepy, but it wouldn't have hurt to have a look at what he was up against here.

“Hey, say something if you’re not alone.” Stan said, at least covering his bases.

The radio warbled out a short sentence, which meant there went any questions he could ask Ford.

He tried to think of some kind of ghost repellent, but he didn't exactly carry ghost repellent on him and even if he did he didn't really know what would get rid of it without possibly also getting rid of Ford too.

He frowned, begrudgingly accepting that he couldn't really do anything about party crashing spirits.

Ford had used this lamp to get his attention earlier though, so he wanted him to see this desk specifically which meant this END machine had to be the answer to this or at least help him get closer to the answer. Something must have gone wrong with it. 

He’d only just found a paper with some words on it when the radio piped up quietly again. 

Stan glanced down at it, uncertain what to do with that, wondering if maybe something had happened and now Ford was alone again, but it was so quiet.

The radio quietly picked up on a couple words again, then a pause, then another set of words. Was he... talking with the bastard? (Bill, he guessed, though Stan was pretty attached to just calling him bastard at this point).

An idea hit him. “Hey, lemme see if I can talk to the bastard.”

Within a moment, the desk lamp flickered haphazardly, with what looked like some excitement. It was definitely the bastard too, it didn't come off with any kind of negativity like anger or panic.

Great, all of this had been going on for so long that now he was starting to read personality from how a light flickered. Okay, whatever. Time to see what he was working against.

He opened his mouth to say something back, and the light shattered with an intense, sharp buzz of electricity.

Stan jumped, instinctively pulling his hands up from the table, but thankfully nothing seemed to actually hit him.

He let out a slow sigh, lowering his hands back down with a mutter, glancing over the desk to inspect the damage.

Most of it must have been stopped by the metal cover that was pointed downwards, the only glass he could see was in a loose oval around the lamp. Oddly enough too it looked like a small bit of the bulb had busted into actual powder.

“Still see that you’re a bastard.” Stan said, leaning back in the chair.

Yeah, if that's what was going to happen then the idea wasn't worth the wasted effort. He figured maybe he could trick the bastard into giving him some information, but at this rate he’d rather just wait until he was alone with Ford again and ask him instead.

This whole ‘lights exploded right by him’ thing was starting to get really old now.

“Suit yourself.” He said, getting back to shuffling through the papers, there was no more flickering lights or buzzing radio to interrupt his investigation. 

Again, most of this stuff was just equations and some sketches. It turned out that the machine just screwed into Ford’s head behind his ears and there were a few tiny screws on the outside to open the casing and get to the inner mechanisms of the gizmo.

As it turned out, Stan didn't know shit about neurowaves, circuitry, or weird symbol magic. So, he didn't figure out a whole ton about this anti-possession machine, except that it was probably better than whatever stuff Ford had been working on before. Unlike the notes he'd found yesterday, these ones weren't covered in scratch marks that cut through the paper or hastily written words that he couldn't even read. 

But hell, Stan couldn’t figure this out.

It’d take him months to learn the stuff that went into this thing enough to understand what it did and to make sure anything he did to it didn’t literally scramble Ford’s brain, because apparently brain waves were part of this and he didn’t know how to ‘un-mess’ up someone’s brain.

Having a nerd like Ford around who could actually talk right now would make this ten times easier. Maybe there was some tech geek in town he could talk to or-

“The guy!” Stan said, shooting up in his seat. He quickly realized how vague that had to sound to Ford. He wished there was a way he could talk in a way that only Ford could hear, but not enough to try and figure something out for something this small.

“The guy that went to the library with you." He explained, gesturing with a hand. "Librarian said he checked out some math books or whatever. If I find him then hell, maybe he can help me figure this out.” Even if not, the guy had to know something. 

Stan gathered up all the loose papers on the table together, putting them into the first empty folder he could find. He stopped in the middle of the floor on his way back to the elevator.

"Oh." Keys.

He searched around the tables in the room before eventually grabbing Ford's coat and lifted the thing, weirdly heavy, to shake it. Hearing the jangle of keys, he let the coat back down and fished the keys out of the pockets before checking to see what made the coat so heavy.

He set the folder of papers back onto the metal desk, and quickly found a thick journal in an inside pocket of the coat. It didn't have a title on the spine, but immediately Stan realized the golden hand emblem on the front of it had six fingers.

Stan glanced around until he spotted a clock to check the time. The library should still be open, but if he tried to read through this thing he'd be risking showing up to the place already closed.

He set the book onto the desk and flicked open to a random page, seeing a sketch of a lanky creature. A couple more random pages of similar entries was enough to assure him it was just some of Ford's research that probably didn't have anything about whatever all this was in it.

He closed the book, leaving it to check out later with the rest of this floor, and stuffed the folder of papers in the crook of his elbow on his way back towards the elevator again.

* * *

Lee was thankfully working, which was good because Stan’s best plan would have been to ask whatever librarian that was there if they knew any nerds he could talk to. 

The light hung low in the library, the dusk laying over the town visible through the windows facing the town square. A couple patrons were actually roaming around the library now. Without the unacknowledged threat of Ford being dead somewhere in a ditch, the library was actually a lot more calm... and well boring, but Stan would take a little bit of boring right now.

"Fiddleford McGucket."

“Fiddle- Really?” Stan had heard all kinds of names before, but in a small town like this he hadn’t been expecting anything like that.

“It is not the weirdest name in this town, trust me.” Lee responded.

Stan made a face, but didn’t fight them on it. “If you say so, you got an address?”

Lee briefly glanced around then slid over a card towards Stan, the cliched 'You didn't get this from me' was unspoken, but loudly implied.

"Has anyone ever told you you're the best kind of librarian?" Stan glanced at the card before pocketing it.

"Ah, maybe, I'm not sure. That'd be a really nice compliment under different circumstances, though." They said. “Any luck with finding him?”

“You just gave me the card so no.”

“I meant your brother.”

“Oh. Uh, that’s a little complicated actually.” Stan said.

Lee looked at them, concerned. “ _So_... What does that mean?”

“You know, Lee, when you think about it what does anything even mean?” Stan said, stalling to think of something. “Life, living,” shoot, he was starting to have a theme here, “uh finding people. How do you explain any of it?”

Lee clasped their hands into a fist on top of the information desk. “You gotta know this is more anxiety inducing than just saying he's in jail or something, right? He's been missing for two months, please."

Man, this would be ten times easier if Ford was just in jail right now. “Okay, okay, calm down.” He said. “I did find him, he’s just not in the best state right now plus there’s something going on here.”

That did seem to put them a little at ease at least. “Is he okay?”

Stan paused, thinking of the best way to answer that.

“See,” Lee said, “see that right there makes me think he’s being held hostage by the mob or something.”

"Mob? There's not even a gang in this town, come on." Stan said. Sure, he'd considered a mob thing, but he hadn't known anything about this town so he had an excuse.

"You didn't see how he was acting before he stopping showing up." They replied uneasily.

"I kinda got an idea how it looked." He said, before shaking his head and continuing on. “Look, he’s in the hospital... and out of it.” Literally.

“He’s- okay.” They deflated, finally relaxing. “Where did you even find him?”

“Eh, that’s a long story.” Mostly it just required a lot more details than Stan felt like sharing right now. Thankfully, Lee just let it drop though.

“You didn’t even need the address then, did you?”

“There’s still a lot going on.” Stan said before easily lying with a shrug. “Plus, I figured I should tell Ford’s friend that I found him, you know.”

“Oh, yeah that’s a good idea.”

“Thanks.” Stan said. “And thanks for the address, I’m going to see if I can find him before it gets too late.”

“Oh! Wait a second.” Lee said, turning for a moment then pausing again, their customer service voice coming back for a moment. “Ah, could you please wait here for just a moment? I'll be quick, I promise.”

“Uh, yeah, sure?” As soon as he’d agreed, they’d walked off back into the library and disappeared into an aisle.

After a minute, they came back carrying a couple books. They flipped them open on the information desk without even saying anything, starting to write on the cards on the inside.

Stan waved hand to get their attention, and to try and wave off the books. “Uh- Hey, that’s nice and all, but I’m not up for any reading recommendations.” Stan said. “You got the wrong guy though. I’m not much of a reader as it is and now’s a bad time even if I was.”

“Oh-" They paused, with a partially guilty look on their face, but resumed writing again. "No, I understand. No offense, but these aren’t for you. I don’t know what you like.” Lee said, turning back to the sets of drawers and pulling out one of the cards and writing on it as well, before setting the books on the table in front of him.

Stan was met by an illustrated book cover of strange sea creatures rising out of a dark blue ocean and winged creatures flying around in the air, and beneath that he could see the book cover beneath it had some galaxy on it. 

“I don’t know why he’s in the hospital, but he'll feel better with something to read." 

“Space and sea monsters, you got him down to a T.” He’d love it if he could actually read, or well- turn pages himself and actually read through a book. “I’m not sure when he’ll actually be able to read though.”

“Take them back with you anyway.” Lee insisted. “That way they’re at least there for when he can.”

All things considered, some reading material while Ford recovered had to be in the bottom five of things that mattered right now.

Stan envisioned Ford in the hospital bed, lying there, but this time awake and completely absorbed in a book though and-... 

Hell, you know... Lee had already checked the books out anyway. It'd just be more trouble to leave them at this point, really, if you thought about it. Besides, maybe the thought of the books at hospital did make him feel a little- he didn't know, lighter?

“Okay... Okay, yeah, thanks." Stan said, taking the books. "He’ll love them.”

* * *

By the time Stan got halfway to the address it was already dark, and Stan ruled out actually trying to meet the guy tonight.

There was a chance this Fiddleford guy wasn’t in on it, and if that was the case then there was nothing more suspicious than a guy knocking on your door at night. Plus, if something happened right now he didn't want to wind up losing all the papers he had. 

Plus, if Stan was being honest he was actually getting really antsy about leaving Ford’s body alone for as long as he had already. Nobody should have known Ford was at the hospital, besides Lee who he’d just told, so Ford should be fine.

Stan couldn’t shake the worry though that he’d get back to the room at the hospital and Ford’s bed would just be empty, nothing to show he’d been there except for the pushed aside sheets.

By the time he’d made it back to the hospital, he had gotten to the point of becoming fully convinced that as soon as he opened the door that Ford would be missing because really what else did he expect to happen when there was someone obviously after Ford. It actually took him a little bit by surprise to push open the door and actually see Ford’s body still laying in the bed, exactly like he had been when Stan had left.

With a breath out, Stan slowly relaxed again, closing the door after himself and setting the books down onto the counter near Ford’s head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A spark in the dark makes a difference.


	7. The Man on the Radio

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright everyone it's time for _The Scene_

There were people who got to peacefully sleep through a night, then there were people that had apparently pissed off karma at some point and told 'em to bite it for good measure. And if you were someone like Stan Pines there was a secret, and even worse, third option that liked to pop up sometimes too. (Lucky him!) Thankfully, he didn’t actually run into that third option too often.

Although, if he did tonight, then hey! He was already in the middle of a hospital.

So far tonight though, he was just part of that second group. When he was asleep, he was tossed from nightmare to nightmare, and when he was awake it was because the radio had gone off for the sixth damn time that night.

He groaned loudly as he woke up yet again to the sound of a blurred, staticky voice that stopped once he was up. In the dim hospital room, shapes threw themselves into a couple of shadowy patches and shades of soft, dark colors. 

He settled back against the chair again, adjusting his feet back onto the side of the bed where he’d propped them up, slinging an arm over his eyes to block out the sight. until he could get his head to work around thoughts again and dredge itself back out of the cold, imaginary world of the dream he'd just been in.

At first, the room had been comforting, all the sharp whites dulled down in the darkness and making it bearable and less alien. The more times Stan woke up disoriented and still in a half dream state with fleeting fear running down his back though the eerier the room felt each time. Less comforting and more like a screwy, sideways painting of safety. 

His thoughts gradually started work again and his mind dredged itself back out of the frightening atmosphere of the last nightmare. He soaked in the quiet of the moment, where he was certifiably safe, trying to take in the scraps of peace he could. 

After a moment, he finally let his arm fall back down again and looked over at the clock hanging over the wall to see it was barely past midnight. 

Deep breath in, and- "Gyahhhh." A worn down groan came out instead of a calm breath back out.

Well, he did the deep breath in part, that counted for something. Considering someone obviously had it out for him, he counted every second so far that he hadn’t groaned from frustration a win.

Stan knew the bastard, or something with the bastard, was making his dreams hell. Ford had said something about dreams before. He was pretty sure.

Either way, it made sense that if Ford could get into Stan's dreams that other things could too, and Stan didn't usually have nightmares like  _ this. _

He had to guess that the radio waking him up was Ford trying to help. Stan woke up to the damn static when the nightmares were on the edge of overwhelming or had already passed over into overwhelming and he felt swallowed up by them. 

The first couple times it'd been a nice gesture and he'd taken a couple minutes to calm down before going back to sleep. Now though it was worse because he was too damn tired to fully separate himself from the nightmare before he was right back in another one again, which just meant he had to deal with nightmares without actually getting any rest.

His body needed the damn sleep, even if he was dreading going a full night like the past couple hours asleep had gone.

“Stanford.”

The radio bubbled quietly.

“If you wake me up one more time, I’m turning the stupid radio off.”

There wasn’t a response, and he didn’t need one. Stan turned, going back to sleep. If he was lucky, he’d get through the night or at least another hour.

* * *

There were people that got a peaceful sleep, and there were people that didn’t deserve - that should have known they couldn’t ever get it. 

Stan woke up in a cold sweat to the crackling sound of lightning right beside his ear. He jerked hard trying to get away from the sound, his chair rolling half out from underneath him. The imprint of yellow behind his eyelids lingering in the dark room.

He barely caught himself from reaching the ground, huffing in the dark shadow of storm clouds and... and bland ceiling panels that told him he was nowhere near a storm. He was in the same creepy hospital room which meant the sound was-

Stan turned his head to glare at the walkie talkie on the counter. Half convinced it had been the bastard because of how loud it was, and pissed even if by some slim chance it had been Ford. He’d nearly face planted onto the linoleum! 

“That’s it!” He said, pulling himself back up from where he’d half fallen to the floor. 

As if the universe wanted to further punish him, the walkie talkie came to life again and a voice came through the radio which Stan had already set, cranked up to the full volume.

“ **Hello?** ” The voice called with loud, bursting static.

Stan winced as he scrambled to grab the radio and turn it back down to a normal volume. “Fucking hell.”

He sighed, shoulders shaking slightly as he calmed down enough now that he knew he wasn’t about to be assaulted by another loud noise.

A glance at the clock showed him it was 3am. Hadn’t it already been 3am?

Stan shook his head as the voice came from the radio again. Solid, clear, and definitely not Ford. 

“Hello?”

Irritated at his train of thought being interrupted, on top of the loud noises, he pressed down on the button to talk. “Hey, this is a private station, over.” 

He let go of the button, gradually coming out of his haze. What was this person doing on the radio in the middle of the night...?

Stan checked to see what station he was even on. 6? Yeah, he probably should have figured that. It wasn't a common station though. 

The voice picked up again and the more they talked the more he could at least pick out a southern accent of a man that didn’t sound like he came from Oregon.

“Okay, so,” the man said, “I can’t understand anything you’re saying.”

Stan spoke louder into the radio, enunciating slow and clear. “Can you hear me now? Over.”

“Talking louder doesn’t make you sound clearer.” The man said. 

Stan scoffed. “Great...”

“I know it’s late,” The man continued, in an uncomfortable voice, “and I’m sorry to bother, but- Well, this is going to be quick either way. It’s a yes or no sorta question, where yes is a short response and no is a long one, alright?”

Stan waited for him to continue, and realized after a moment that the man must have been waiting on him. 

“What is it?” Stan spoke shortly into the radio to signal back a clear ‘Yes.’

“Alright.” The man said. “So just make a short response if you see this light, and a long one if you don’t got a clue what I’m talking about.”

Stan glanced around for a moment, confused, then stopped, feeling stupid looking for a light in a closed hospital room. He’d blame his lack of sleep, but he really was just- A light on the top of the walkie talkie started flashing in morse code. 

H. I.

“Okay,” Stan mumbled, staring, “that’s new.”

He pressed the button to talk into the radio. “Saw it.” 

Okay. So, he was awake, right? This wasn’t the weirdest thing to happen, sure, but most radios didn't have stuff like morse code lights. Then again, he had to be at least a little bit awake to realize this was an odd radio.

Stan went to push down on the button to ask questions and barely stopped himself because no matter what he said, this guy wouldn't understand what he was actually trying to ask.

“Okay...” The man said, voice momentarily quieter than before. “Uh... is...” The voice stretched into a long silence that didn’t break.

This time Stan did push onto the button to talk. “Hey. Hello?? Are you still there? Earth to- you. Over.”

The man responded. “Can you use the light? There should be a uh... underneath the talk button there’s a moveable part and underneath it is a button you can press that makes the light go on the other end.”

Stan looked and there was a part of the casing with a lip to let you lift it up and move it out of the way. It looked like it would have opened up to where the batteries were at, but instead like the man had said there was a button there. 

Stan pressed his thumb against the button, tapping on it to hopefully send a message.

H. E. Y.

“Hey. See ya know morse code, that’s- that’s real good.” The man said, sounding less than enthusiastic.

Stan slumped down into his chair before talking to Ford who was surely nearby.

“You know this person, right? This is- we have the same kind of unique radio, they gotta be the same set.” He said, waving the radio in his hand.

Again, this wasn’t the weirdest thing to happen, but it felt so surreal. Out of nowhere there’s this man with the other end of this radio that calls in the middle of the night. Who- who hadn’t really said anything in a few seconds.

Stan pressed down on the button to talk without thinking. “Hey, what are you- mm.” He pressed his lips together.

“The light, if you’d kindly.” The man said

“Yeah, I know! I know that already!” Stan sighed loudly and tucked a complaint away. "You try doing morse code at 3am." He muttered under his breath. 

He positioned his thumb back over the button for the light signal, tapping out a message.

W. H. A. T. (Wait, hell, no, who was this? Gah, it was too late now. ‘What?’ ‘What’s going on?’ ‘What are you doing?’)

“Uhh...” Stan hesitated.

“What..?” The man asked.

Stan grimaced as he hurried to the next word.

D. O. I. N. G.

Yeah. Yeah, that made enough sense... probably? Uh, showed that he didn’t mince words, straight to the point.

"What...doing?" The man asked slowly. “What am I doing.”

Oh, good, it actually worked.

The man continued, not actually answering his question. “Uh, so look. I don’t really understand what all’s going on here. This is really,” and the guy paused, “something, I reckon. I wasn’t really expecting you to actually be there, you know, ha.”

No. No, he didn’t know because, yet again, Stan had gotten thrown another curveball and it had to come at him while he was half asleep. He didn't even know what this man was doing or who he was.

Stan tapped back a response.

W. H. A. T. 

“Well, I didn’t think anybody would pick up,” The man started and Stan tapped haphazardly on the light to get attention, “especially from- from the radio you’re- What? What is it?”

W. H. O.

“Who... did I think would pick up?”

Y. O. U. 

The man said, quiet. “You don’t- okay, sorry. I kinda didn’t... I didn’t think anybody would pick up from the other half of this radio.”

Stan waited impatiently, tapping out yet again.

W.H.O. Y.O.U.

The man on the radio introduced himself. "I’m Fiddleford.”

Fiddleford McGumption. 

The other nerd from the library that had been hanging around Ford before. 

Stan paused, processing before he actually let himself feel anything to make sure this didn’t actually make this whole thing ten times more confusing. 

Fiddleford was some kind of math nerd that had been around Ford, and now he was the man that had the other half of Ford's radio. Yes. Okay.

It made sense, and surprisingly it also gave helpful context. This man had to have known Ford pretty well if they had been on good enough terms to share a unique set of radios.

The man- Fiddleford’s voice came through the radio again. “I know this is gonna be really odd sounding, but I got... I don’t know, a message? It doesn’t make any sense to me, but he made it seem like it would mean something.” He said. “He told me to tell you ‘pull.’ Maybe ‘pull them’ or ‘pull it out,’ but he definitely said ‘pull.’” 

It took half a second for it to click.

The endodermal-! endodual neural-! the anti possession headpieces!

Stan shot up in his seat to glance over at Ford in the darkness, at the spot behind his ear where one of the pieces laid, hidden by his hair.

With a sudden burst of energy, Stan got up and flicked the light on in the room then went back to Ford so he could push the hair back and look at the small machine.

Fiddleford’s voice coming through again threw him off. "Does that... that doesn't make any sense, does it?" 

Taking the radio, he tapped back a message.

I. T. D. O. E. S. (pause) W. A. I. T.

“Okay...?” Fiddleford replied.

Stan set the radio down, then immediately picked it back up, maybe he could ask- "Gah." He let the thing drop onto the bed, ignoring it in favor of looking at Ford and thinking, nervous now.

He reached out to the piece behind Ford’s right ear, and tentatively touched it before pulling his hand back.

“Okay...” He said. “Okay.” 

It felt too easy. Just pull the things off and boom? No brain scrambling or nothing?

“Hey.” Stan said into the air. “Who’s here?”

The bulb over his head fizzled, the light of the room flickering. 

“Alright, so- that just means one of you’s here.” He picked the radio up again, holding it in front of his chest. “Sixer?”

Unintelligible, the radio static wobbled on a voice that was so buried under layers of noise that it really could have been anyone. It could have been Ford though. 

Stan tried to swallow. “Okay, so.” He knew what to do, he just didn’t know if he could really handle it if this turned out wrong though.

A laugh bubbled out of him. “Ha. Hey, you stopped me from doing something stupid before and nothing went wrong then, right? So, if this is stupid then just do that again.” Stan concluded with a confident voice and smooth wave out of his hands, fingers definitely not shaking. “Boom, easy.”

He put on a smile, trying to let his own reasoning convince himself.

Stan set the radio beside Ford and leaned forward, carefully grabbing the gizmos behind Ford's ears and waited a moment. For the moment where lights flashed and broke and glass shattered. It didn’t come though.

There was a quiet moment, then another. Then he pulled.

The initial tug did nothing and he pulled again, harder, and the pieces came off quietly in his hands.

He glanced at the space left behind, not sure what he’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been a small square of flat metal embedded in Ford’s skin. 

A quick glance at Ford’s vitals on the nearby screen didn’t show any flat lines. 

Stan shakily breathed out. So far, not bad.

He watched Ford and waited for anything, anything at all. The warmth from the headpieces quickly faded away as he held onto them by tense fingers as he waited, metal growing lukewarm in his chilled hands.

Then, something changed. 

Stan couldn’t even say what because Ford hadn't moved an inch, but it was like the air was different now.

Stan gingerly set the headpieces onto his seat without looking away.

Ford’s breathing changed, interrupting the unchanging rhythm that had become background noise early on, then all at once - he woke up.

His eyes opened as he lurched forward into a sitting position, off balance with an arm holding himself up from behind. He took a half aborted breath of air followed by clumsy and deep breaths like he’d just breached water.

“Ford!” Stan moved, catching onto Ford’s shoulder and keeping him steady. “Stanford, hey. Oh my god. Hey, okay.”

Ford looked at Stan, his breathing already gradually evening out though he still looked a little out of it.

The heavy dread washed away and something rattled around in Stan's chest and broke free, making it feel lighter.

Ford was... okay. He was fine. He was actually okay, and alive, and -  _ finally  _ \- here in one piece.

A smile tentatively twitched its way onto Stan’s face then bloomed as the knowledge settled in.

“Hey.” Stan greeted lightly.

After a moment Ford smiled, lopsided and warmer than Stan ever expected to see again. 

“Hey.” Ford greeted him back in a rough voice.


End file.
